The Blue Light Project (25 page)

Under a picture of what looked like two small figurines of circus strongmen, barbells aloft, the slogan:
Ignorance Is Strength.
And plastered across the center, a new picture, recently appended to the whole: a not particularly flattering photo of Thom Pegg.

He was now awake in a different way than he could remember being for a long time. Ripped off a website, scanned out of an issue of the magazine, candid maybe, although it had to be said, however the photo had been obtained, Pegg himself was looking just a shade less well than he would have hoped to appear in print. A bit bruised under the eyes. A bit florid and blossomy across the cheekbones.

Pegg was trying to deal now with new currents and fluxes within, adrenaline, random synaptic firings. Someone in the press pool, the jealous bastards. But an old dread was coming again to life. Pegg knew exactly what the feeling was: the dread sense of being watched, followed. Pegg felt targeted. And he longed for home just then, staring at this thing. This gag. This taunt. He ached not just for the city where he lived, with its hot breezes, palm trees, tanning lotion, exhaust, Mexican food, reefer, public-beach porn. He was longing even for his own cramped apartment with the crushed furniture and the empty refrigerator. Three hundred and fifty square feet of gobbed Kleenexes and spent pizza boxes. Kitty litter. Empties. A ceramic model of a Chinese lady holding a lantern. She had a cork in her head, had once held liqueur. And thinking all this, Chastity came back to him, but only for the briefest moment before Pegg chased her from the room of his recollection. Not now. Not even that.

No time to linger. Pegg was now being spoken to from close, with urgency. Haden was there. Two other men. Then a fourth man in uniform, who would take Pegg the final distance. Helmet, face gear, black fatigues. He had a weapon that suggested a great deal by its completely unfamiliar shape. What trickery was there in this tiny rifle that seemed to mount itself to the man’s arm, a slender, serpentine thing that glinted blue in the failing light? What evil had we here, Pegg wondered, what elegant and hidden industry of malfeasance in that smooth shape?

“Ready,” someone said. Not a question. A radio squelching quietly in behind the sound of water trickling in the sewers. They crossed the
street and into another alley running parallel to the plaza. Around a corner to a dead end. There were loading bays and various men in blue arrayed about. They didn’t take their eyes off the rear door of the theater as Pegg approached. None of them but one man standing facing the other way, circling and scanning the rooflines, rifle raised.

The soldier guiding Pegg had his hand on Pegg’s arm, holding him back. He motioned and Pegg leaned close to listen. Through these doors he would find a warehouse with another single door at the far end. Through that second door was a hallway. Through that hallway was the foyer of the studio theater. The only door into the theater that wasn’t locked would be right there at the top of the foyer. Announce yourself, loud and clear. Then go inside. Pegg would be on his own at that point and in blackness.

Pegg felt the pressure of the soldier’s hand change as this information was transferred. The hand went from holding Pegg in place to pushing him forward, first gently and then with frank authority.
Go now.
So Pegg was walking. Moving forward. He was entering the shadows of the loading bay. And since nobody said good luck, he said it himself.
Good luck.
His voice at a trembling whisper. To the door and through it. Down the hallway and into the empty foyer. His blood moving in coarse surges he could feel in his neck and his temples.
Good luck, Thom.
Through the silent foyer and lobby, past the empty leather benches there. Hand to the surface of the heavy wooden door, fingers shaking violently. Quivering, dancing, shimmying just over the polished surface before they steadied on contact with the wood.

And into the blackness, blind and gagging. Pegg entered the theater and the latrine stench of a closed space rolling towards its second twelve hours. His throat convulsed and he groped to cover his mouth and nose.

“Hello?” he tried, muffled through his fingers. He felt his heart rate spike, his hands shaking again, his whole organism polluted with adrenaline and anxiety. Around him there was no light at all.

“Hello?” he said again. And hearing the sound around him shifting now too. Some snuffled breathing from far away. Then a voice. But close. It might have been inches. It might have been inside his own ear.

“I’m here.”

And a hand on his arm again, but this time closing over his bicep in a firm grip.

Pegg screamed. That’s what his body threw back at the moment. A torque of the shoulders, a strangled call. His belly inflamed and his back in spasm with the sudden touch and sound.

He went to his knees. And from there he fell, toppled sideways and lay. He felt tight carpet grain at his cheek, smelled industrial glues and cleansers and the spreading mystery of building materials. Concrete, rubber.

And it was only there—laid out, blind, exposed—that Pegg heard himself in place, for the first time among them. Through the black space around him, a sprinkling of human sound, scattered scrapes and tiny voices. And the truth of it crushed Pegg flatter still. KiddieFamers, children. In their tiny individual fidgets, a constellation of sound: shoe shuffling, nose blowing, low moans. And crying. All around him, issuing forth from hidden souls, the steady trickle of invisible tears.

EVE TOLD THEM RABBIT WAS HER COUSIN. It seemed like the best story for the moment. They hadn’t cuffed him, but Eve thought that was seconds from happening. The two young cops were tense. They had his pack turned out on the hood of the cruiser. Eve saw tools and wire. These things signaled bad ideas premeditated.

But they hadn’t committed to any action by the moment Eve arrived. And without planning it, without knowing specifically what she hoped to accomplish, Eve interceded on instinct, on impulse.

“Ali,” she said again, which flushed through her an intense variety of excitement. The young man looked like he had some of Ali’s personal material. Declining to look worried, although the situation was obviously serious. Acting as if things were under control, when they clearly weren’t. That attitude was all Ali, all the time. Eve enjoyed seeing it for the way she seemed to immediately tap the energy and feel more certain herself.

So Eve said the name of her brother and made this young man into a cousin. To her own surprise, the whole story was ready to roll there, waiting. Father’s brother’s son. Known for exploring places he wasn’t
supposed to explore. Known for not carrying identification. Then, to emphasize, Eve stepped between the two cops and took Rabbit up in a sisterly embrace. She could hear him breathing in her ear. But he held her firmly, this stranger. He played along. And when she let him go to arm’s length and asked about her fictitious uncle, he replied with just the right sheepish tone. Doing fine. Don’t tell him about this, please.

He was much less like the Ali she remembered at this close range, in fact. Same unruly loose black curls, but more relaxed than Ali. Smiling evenly, easy in his stance. Open, tan face, full lips. Gray-green eyes. Bigger than Ali through the upper body. She could feel the cops shifting on their feet behind her, loosening their grip on the situation as Eve promised to return the moment to normal.

“Don’t forget this,” one of them said, handing Rabbit his pack. He thanked them. He apologized. He offered to show up at the station in the morning with identification.

They waved it off. They weren’t smiling. A heavy residual of cop doubt remained. But he was with her and that counted. So they clipped off their suspicions and let Eve make everybody’s life easier. They said to him: “Get going.”

She took his arm and they walked away, north towards the plaza, bumping shoulders the way you might with a family member you hadn’t seen in a while, a family member with whom you’d once been close. And when they were half a block north, just passing the doors of Double Vision, Eve suddenly felt that she had to be out of the sight lines. She popped the key card and they stepped into the cool and neutral lobby. Here she paced away from the young man, looking at her reflection in the doors leading into a bank branch.

When she turned back to him, the young man had gone to one knee on the marble floor. He had his pack open and was rearranging things inside. There was urgency in his motions, as if he needed to confirm that everything was still there. Then she watched as he withdrew a
scored city map from his waistband, opening it and refolding it carefully before sliding it into the pack. It was marked with many numbers and lines, but she had only the briefest glimpse.

He said: “Thank you.”

She shook her head.

“Do I know you?” he asked. “Because why . . . ?”

She said: “Because I saw you jump yesterday.”

He looked up at her sharply. Then he got to his feet. He said: “Where?”

“From the Peavey Block and across the alley. To the next building.”

He made a face, a minor wince of self-reproach. “Where were you?”

“I was in the alley,” she told him. “You scared me.”

He was looking at her with a new curiosity. He recognized her face but couldn’t place it. He said: “I should probably get out of here.”

“No,” Eve said. “You walk with me a bit. I need to talk to you.”

They skirted the plaza. They crossed an invisible perimeter that marked the press zone. White vans with satellite dishes cupped towards the lowered skies. Then another outer perimeter that seemed to mark the very eastern edge of the conflict area itself. Beyond that, in steadily more dirty streets, the city grew quieter, the Meme Crisis a disturbance still, but at one critical remove. They reached a small park, down into the east end. A stamp of muddy green. Eve had never been in the area before and noticed the sadly sloping houses and storefronts, nothing painted recently, every second building for sale. She asked: “Where are we going?”

He stopped and gestured to a bench. “Here,” he said. “Let’s sit here for a bit.”

They sat, just as a cop car pulled out of a side street and turned its flashers on, then sped off west towards the plaza.

Rabbit ran fingers through his hair, watching. “It’s as if the city has been taken over.”

“That’s because the city has been taken over.”

“There are people waiting to do this kind of thing, always,” Rabbit said. “Roll out the threat. Roll out the response.”

The bench where they sat was opposite a three-story parking garage with an open concrete stairwell that ran down the outside. Half a dozen young men were taking turns running the stairs from top to bottom. They were doing so with different flourishes and vaults. One running down the concrete rail. The next swinging over the side of a landing and dropping to the one below. At the bottom they challenged for the highest dismount, one guy sailing from ten feet, fifteen feet up the structure and onto the grass there. Tucking and rolling and walking free. Rabbit watched. Eve noted how there was no applause or high-fives when somebody nailed a move. This kid in the tuque here, swinging free of the top landing, hanging from the rail, then bouncing with his feet, creating a kick of momentum and flying across the entire flight of stairs below to the far landing where he hardly touched down, only catching the railing again and swinging back. Landing by landing. Spider-Man was never this agile. Then down to the grass and up on his feet. Nobody even smiled. And Eve understood that it was enough just to do it and keep on doing it. To jog up the concrete apron of sidewalk. To mount the stairs and take position at the back of the queue.

She said: “Parkour. What you were doing.”

Now half a dozen people dressed in black jogged down the street towards the plaza. Black handkerchiefs across their faces. Black Bloc, Eve thought, wondering at the magnetic pull this crisis was proving to have. A thought that came to her just as a police van pulled to the curb across the park and two men began unloading gear.

Rabbit was squinting into the low light, watching these same crosscurrents. He answered her finally, saying: “Not Parkour. Or not just that. We call it Freesteal. Freedom of movement. Stealing time and
views. It’s about getting in places. Getting out. Leaving a poster behind or some writing or whatever it is.”

Eve looked over at Rabbit. “What about doing a handstand on the parapet of a building six stories above the alley? What’s that: free-suicidal?”

Rabbit nodded and frowned. Then he slowly turned his head to meet her gaze. “All right, I’m curious. How’d you know I did that?”

“Before I saw you jump across the alley, I was in the eighth-floor boardroom of the building across the street. How’d you hurt your hand?”

Rabbit nodded and pursed his lips. Then he looked back towards the kids climbing the parking garage. “I just got it. UNICEF posters. You’re the skier. Goodwill ambassador to the world.”