This Is the Night (32 page)

Each sight his eyes fall on is sick: the dirty toddler running naked while his scarred and hobbled father tosses wood chips at a pigeon—sick. A bald man in a wheelchair with a thick mustache and matchstick legs mumbling to himself, insanity on wheels. Sick. At least he can see the park now. It’s true: there are plenty of benches. As the sun lowers into the clouds, a deep, coppery light covers the world around him. Spotting an empty bench, Alan puts his bag under his head and uses it as a pillow. His bent eyes push themselves closed. Within moments, he is asleep. Soon Gad comes to him, calm and forgiving, and they develop a true plan, a direction.

“Hey,” a voice says.
(Name and Address of Person Who Will Always Know Your Address.)
We could find each other, Alan thinks. I could explain. “Hey,” repeats the voice.

Gad has found him.

But the voice isn’t Gad’s. Alan looks up and squints into the morning sun. However long he has slept, it doesn’t seem to have been enough. A man is speaking, telling him that where he’s sleeping isn’t a good place to sleep.

“A young guy like you? Alone on a First Tuesday?” the man says. “Might as well just go report for duty.”

The man has gold crowns in his mouth that wink when he talks. He is also missing one arm. On closer inspection, the man’s furry voice sounds nothing like Gad. Is the sound of his closest friend already fading?

“But I don’t have a good place to sleep,” Alan says. He blinks the sun out of his eyes.

“Well, I can get you a meal.”

The man, Alan sees, is bald.

“A kid who doesn’t have a good place to sleep could probably use a meal,” the bald man says. “But first, you have to play a game.”

“A game?” Alan says. A shuddering joy comes over him. Though he knows his path is a long one, it seems that he has stumbled upon the trailhead. Perhaps the rubber slice of Registry bus could serve as the sincerity of his intentions. Maybe he doesn’t have to burn down the induction center tonight after all.

“Come take a ride,” the baldhead says. It is as though the man is reading a script from his pamphlets. Everything is how it should be. “Get ready for the most important game of your life.”

Let the journey begin.

30.

Benny woke up shivering, the cold sun drilling holes in his eyelids. He had slept, it seemed, from the afternoon of one day to the morning of the next. A thin film of dew had wrapped itself around him while he slept. Hours on the bench had made him stiff, though the thought of making his way toward the induction center offered up a much worse feeling.
First Tuesdays are the worst days.
At least he had till sundown.

Sitting up, he could see that his bench was not the only one in the park that had been slept on. Other men around him slowly groaned to life, pushing off the wet morning as best they could.

As his stomach spun, Benny thought of Joe. How had he spent his nights up there in the mountains? Hopefully Joe had been smart enough to somehow break into the cabin.
One Thousand and One Ways to Beat the Registry
was still on the grass, dried and caked with bile, pages stuck and mashed together. If his throat could have handled it, Benny would have coughed up some more, just to punish that book filled with words all pointed in the wrong direction.

There was, Benny thought, nothing to intercept Joe with if he showed up at the induction center, nothing to save either of them. A one-armed man with a shaved head and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses moved into Benny’s line of sight. People in this city just couldn’t leave each other alone.

“I don’t need it,” Benny said.

“What don’t you need?”

“Whatever your angle is.”

“Fair enough. We don’t need you, either.” The man sidestepped the vomit-caked book and sat down on the bench.

Benny turned to look at him. “Does whatever you have that doesn’t need me have a meal somewhere in it?”

“Yup.”

“Okay.”

“But if you want the meal, you’re going to have to play a game.” The gold crowns flashed again. The man seemed to be enjoying himself.

“What kind of game?”

“The most important game of your life.”

“Look, I just want something to eat, okay? I’ll listen to whatever you say, but I have to be somewhere important by sundown.”

“First Tuesday, eh? That’s nothing compared to the Joust. First day of the rest of your life, brother.”

“That’s the game? The Joust?”

“You got it.”

“Meal first?”

“On my word.” He placed his hand to his chest.

The man led Benny to the edge of the park, where a large van idled on the street. Inside were two other men with shaved heads—one of them definitely Registry age, a situation that immediately tensed Benny up—alongside a bald woman and three other guys with hair who seemed to have also been sleeping in the park. The youngest—even younger than me, Benny thought—looked to be worse off than any of them. Bags under his eyes and a nervous look on his face, this kid was Minority Group L, Benny thought, or maybe even Homeland Indigenous, but definitely tired, hungry, and new to the city. As the van pulled out into the street, the kid’s eyes, though hemmed-in and hungry, clamored to take in as much of the city as his weakened state would allow.

“Now right there”—Benny pointed to the kid, eager to act as tour guide—“that’s the island just off the coast where—”

“Wow,” the driver said, turning around to interrupt. “You guys smell like corpses.”

Who the hell was this bald-kid driver to talk to him like that? And on a First Tuesday? Benny would have swung an axe right through his neck if the situation had allowed for it. That his last day of freedom should have to be spent cadging free food from strangers was a hollow truth that the driver’s smug words seemed to magnify. What about good-byes to friends, to parents? But again, he still had till sundown. If he could just get a good meal, his mind might clear a bit and he’d be able to think. “Now where was I?” Benny cleared his throat and pointed out a few more landmarks to the possibly Indigenous kid. No one brought up the fact that it was First Tuesday, but everyone was well aware that a good chunk of the populace was due to report. Even those who had never interacted with the Registry knew how the last day of freedom worked. Show up by six p.m. or else.

Through the window, Benny looked at the pedestrians—women mostly—their faces cracked with grief as they went about their day. First Tuesdays made it even worse, he knew, even if their men were long gone. All it took was the pain of another to be reminded of their own misery.

A few more turns and Benny saw the van was headed into the northern part of the city. They drove uphill, past high fences shielding the large homes of the sort of folks who wouldn’t think twice about calling the Point Line on some wildhair wandering their streets. Not like the rusty quadrants surrounding the induction center. Today the place would be packed, and for a brief moment he worried about finding Joe once he got there. A quick meal from these baldheads and then he would duck over to look for him. The timing shouldn’t be hard; if he knew his oldest friend, Joe would have made the decision not to run and would wait for him outside the center, even if it meant walking in just as the blaze of the sun lowered below the horizon. They would find each other, and Benny would tell Joe he was sorry for demanding he follow and then leading him straight to nowhere. Not that an apology would do either of them any good in the jungle.

Benny turned to the possibly Indigenous kid next to him. “So what are you here for?”

The kid frowned. “A meal, just like you.”

“No, I mean, why were you sleeping in the park?”

“Why were
you
sleeping in the park?”

Fine, so the kid didn’t want to talk. Probably had to be at the Registry by six himself. The van drove on. The driver wavered the knob of the radio, pausing for a moment on a tearful ballad. Just as the song reached its highest, most impassioned state, the driver shifted the station. Even though Benny still hated the guy for calling him smelly, he couldn’t blame him for the switch. Sometimes turning off a piece of yourself was the only way to get through the day.

Now, a news station:
At a press conference on the steps of the highest lawmaking assembly in the Homeland
, an announcer intoned,
four more legislators announced that they would now caucus with the Coyo—

Again the driver twisted the knob.

“Hey!” said Benny. “I wanted to hear that.”

“Like four more make a difference,” the driver said.

The other baldheads laughed, as did a few of the park dwellers. All of them but the possibly Indigenous kid.

31.

These baldheads are strange,
Alan thinks. But whoever they are, the baldheads are also, he knows, outside the main lines of communication, downwind from the visible. And below it all is where he needs to be. The van speeds onward, past manicured bushes and verdant lawns, the houses themselves mysteriously hidden.

Wherever HIM is, Alan knows that from now on, he, too, will need to occupy the hidden spaces of the Homeland. Just like Woody Gilbert did. You had to if you were going to unslave young Indigenous from the Homeland and wage war on its way of thinking. How lucky he feels that he has been exposed to the truth at all.

Perhaps all it takes is to get behind the curtain. Perhaps everything he needs is backstage. On the radio, commentators rattle on about First Tuesday, the war turning twenty-three, the prime minister’s recent absence from the airwaves. A whole bunch of surface stuff that he doesn’t need to pay attention to. Someone makes a joke he doesn’t hear, and the entire van breaks into mindless laughter. These baldheads are the stagehands, hinging open the trapdoors on the surface and leading him to all that is hidden below. Alan feels a tap on his shoulder. The talkative stinky guy from the park asks him another annoying question.

32.

“Out,” said the driver. The van had pulled into the driveway of a massive house. In the front yard, baldheads darted in quick bursts all around them, eyes angled downward. “Follow me,” said the man with gold crowns.

Outside, two or three of the baldheads were focused on watering the large and healthy plant life in the front garden. Other baldheads scurried about with urgent postures, hustling around frantically and making wild, jerkwater motions with their hands. Inside, the mansion was immaculate. Dark woods, bright rugs, all bejeweled and gleaming.

The place around Benny seemed charged with a latent rapture that might erupt at any moment. Why these young men should be so happy on a First Tuesday—chances were, some of them had to be up today as well—he didn’t plan on sticking around to find out. Once the promised food came, he would try to slip away before they started their weird little game.

The baldhead led all the park-dwellers from the van into a large room with a platter of stale sandwiches set out on a lengthy table decorated with ferns and a bowl of grapes. The park-dwellers attacked the spread. Of course the grapes were waxed; real grapes would have cost a fortune. Even so, Benny had to touch them. He didn’t care that the sandwiches were stale. They were stacked high, and he ate five of them before he nearly popped a wax grape in his mouth for dessert; it had been so long since he’d had a real one. Benny watched the possibly Indigenous kid stuff two sandwiches into his mouth without chewing. Each bite was fabulous, joyful to the point of hallucination. An incredibly tall baldhead appeared and pointed to the possibly Indigenous kid.

“You asked for me?”

The tall man and the possibly Indigenous kid disappeared down a stairwell.

Once Benny was done eating, another baldhead walked him to the bathroom and handed him a thick red towel. Fine, first a shower, and then he would make his way out of here. On the way to the bathroom, he passed a group of men with full heads of hair. A good chunk of these visitors to baldhead house seemed war age, and all were well dressed. Blue suits, red ties. He studied them for subtle signs that they, too, were up for First Tuesday this evening, but nothing on these men’s faces indicated anything but excitement. They were dressed up and ready to play. But play what?

After his shower, a waiting baldhead directed him to a large main room with a group of folding chairs arranged around a central circle in the rug. For the first time in recent memory, Benny’s body felt fresh, light, even, and he sucked in the unfamiliar smells that had materialized on his skin. The other park-dwellers had scrubbed up, too, seemingly in other bathrooms planted in distant corners of this massive home, all of them except the Indigenous kid, who he didn’t see anywhere. Benny felt a stab of jealousy that the Indigenous kid had probably done exactly what he had wanted to: eaten their food and run. Through the window, the high sun suggested it was midafternoon. Plenty of time until sundown. Maybe he would just check out this game for a minute.

His thoughts were interrupted by the touch of yet another Registry-aged baldhead. “That way,” the man said. “The Joust is over there.”

The grand room held a mixture of baldheads, young men in suits, and freshly scrubbed park people. The very tall baldhead motioned for them to sit in the folded chairs arranged in a circle.

“Listen up, losers,” the tall man boomed. “We’ve brought you here to play a game.” The men on either side of him looked like children. “Only it’s not just a game,” the tall man continued. “Of course, it
is
a game, but if we thought it was
just
a game, we wouldn’t go around finding you crumbs to come play it with us.”

A few of the park-dwellers, Benny included, moved their eyes toward each other.

The tall man noticed the glances. “You don’t like the word
crumbs
? How about Substance Q-heads? What am I saying, I saw some of you get dropped off this morning. If you were just on Substance Q, that would be the least of your problems.”

How long would this bullshit take? He’d had the meal, Benny thought, the luscious warm-water shower, and the puffy towel. Now it was time to head to the induction center, find Joe, say sorry, and break the news that the both of them were beyond saving. Maybe he should just stand up and walk out.

“So what are we going to do?” the tall man went on, his eyes gliding across each person in the circle. “Well, what are we not going to do? We are going to not hold back. This is a Joust, understand? Engaged combat. A Joust isn’t some cocktail party chatter. It’s an attack. You can yell anything, anything that comes into your head.”

“What are the rules?” asked a park-dweller.

“Rules?” The tall man smiled broadly and raised an eyebrow. “Three rules. Don’t Joust drunk or high on any Substance, not even Q. No physical threats. And no holding back.”

Well
that
sounded interesting. Benny listened as the tall man explained the theory of the Joust: “We attack the lies in your lives, the hypocrisy. We take your poisonous attitudes and cure them. We expose and free your secret fears and guilt,” he said, “thereby reducing the tendency for you to pour your distress into some Substance. No line of thought is out of place. Lies are in the service of truth. None of you are clean. Confess, assholes. Dump your shit, or we
will
extract it. Like it or not, we are your only alternative to total failure.”

The guy was clearly an overconfident prick, but Benny couldn’t help but like him. Most of what the tall man had said felt silly or slight, but Benny could see how much the guy was enjoying himself. He liked that; he hadn’t been around such a magnitude of happiness in a long time.

“And now,” the tall man yelled, “let’s Joust!”

Benny shrugged and stared up at the ceiling beams, all angled to the center of the room like spokes on a wheel. So this was it: a nice shower, a sandwich or two, and some crazy game, followed by a trip across town and a loss of freedom. Why the hell not?

Two hours of listening to people vent their rage was more than enough. With their voices now scalded from yelling, the group seemed angrier than before they had started. None of these people seemed to be able to accept the unfairness of life. Before the game had begun, they had all seemed resigned to their unfortunate circumstances. Now they were incensed.

“You think prime ministers would want to go to war if they Jousted?” the tall man said. “You think if those Coyote weenies in parliament knew how to Joust that they’d still be crouching at podiums, whining and begging ‘oh pretty please stop the war’? The Joust can change the world, folks. Six days a week, right here for members. The more you Joust, the better you feel. Monthly dues only ten Currencies. You can pay on your way out.”

Ridiculous. The baldheads, Benny saw, were just another group that regulated your life in return for the empty promise of happiness.

“Bring your friends,” the tall man told them.

And yet these people lived here. Men, young men, ones who had not shipped off to war. The game was bullshit, but still, these baldheads were on to something. He needed to get back to Joe and bring him here. Somehow these people would hide them. Somehow yelling and screaming at others could be their substitute for war.

Benny walked over to the tall man, who was standing alone by the table looking at the waxed grapes longingly. “I want to Joust some more,” he said. “I don’t quite get it. But I like it.”

“So you want to have another go-round?” The tall man handed Benny a cup of coffee and motioned for him to follow. For a moment Benny paused. There were no clocks anywhere in this place, but if they had started the game at noon and played for three hours, he didn’t have much time to chat before he needed to leave. He had no idea how long it might take to get from this far-off neighborhood to the induction center, but it was best not to play it too close.

“You coming or what?” the tall man said.