Wednesday, August 03, 2011

Statuesque (Work in Progress)

I have never been in love. My father used to tell me stories about when he first fell in love, with a mermaid he met at Venice Beach when he was fourteen. She’d beached herself, he said, and turned herself human for an hour in that way that mermaids could. She couldn’t speak, of course, and he only knew her long enough to lift her lithe, beautiful body in his awkward, skinny arms and carry her down to the surf. It wasn’t a long time, he always said, recounting the story wistfully (and only on nights when mom wasn’t home,) but he had known, then and there, what true love felt like. He’d go on to say that he was always grateful to that mermaid, because that’s how he knew when he first fell for my mom.

But that’s not something I’ve ever wanted. It seemed...silly, frivolous and time-consuming. I just wanted to be ordinary, and if the stories I grew up with were any indication, falling in love was anything but. Which is why, fresh from four ordinary years at NYU, with a degree in art history (minor in studio art) tossed lovingly into some box in my new apartment, I set about finding an ordinary job. This proved to be more troublesome than I’d expected, as it turned out. At the start of the summer, I’d applied for about fifty internships, and since the majority of them were in New York, I figured moving there was a pretty safe bet. Five months later, I’d been rejected from all but one. The Met. I was doomed. However, my roommate, Marco, was very supportive when I expressed my fears to him.

“No wonder you can’t get a job, O’Brien,” he’d chuckled from the couch, where he was sharpening his knives. “They already got people to stare at art. They’re called tourists.”

Marco had started out studying biology on a pre-med track, but he’d had this weird, life-affirming experience about four months into his sophomore year. He was at a party one night, completely wasted, and the girl he was trying to impress said she was hungry. To hear him tell it, he just started throwing things in the kitchen together, and after an hour he had created something that everyone present swore was the best thing they’d ever tasted. The next day he dropped out of NYU and enrolled himself in culinary school. I had no idea whether the legend of the party was true or not, but he was a good cook now, and I much preferred tasting his new dishes to helping him memorize anatomy.
A Story in Steam

Steam was more like a living thing than a city, Crow reflected, looking out over her from his rooftop. Like a twisted black iron monolith, she lay unchanging in her self-involvement, either unaware or uncaring towards the parasites that infested her, taking for themselves what little nourishment she had. Smokestacks rose higher than buildings, chimneys for her to vent the steam from the many fires that kept her alive. They almost scraped a sky full of smogclouds, heaving across the sky like great beached beasts of the sea. Below these constant beasts was a dark lady with a heart of fire, and steam was what she bled.

There were lights within her, the warm glow of fluorescent streetlights and the harsh pinks and greens and blues of neon signs and the quick, darting lights of the steamsleds racing throughout the city. A city divided into district after district, with the masses running back and forth, hopping from pool of light to pool of light, ducking into back alleys and brothels, using and using and using, like piglets scrambling to glut themselves on their mother’s milk. Less like a mother and more like a corpse, he decided, a dead husk for the maggots to feed on. ‘But no,’ Crow thought again. He was a contradictory sort of fellow. ‘No one could ever accuse Steam of being dead. Sick and corrupt, maybe, but whatever else she is, she’s alive.’

The city pulses with heat held in every scrap of metal.

“You can say that again,” Crow said quietly, throwing the end of his scarf over his shoulder.

Water falls constantly, but it never rains.

Crow smiled and nodded his affirmation, laying one long-fingered hand against the building’s smokestack. It came away wet. He leaned over the edge of the roof. His dark eyes narrowed and a smirk spread across his face. “Little Edo,” he said out loud, to the darkness and the city itself. “Tell me a story tonight, little district. A story about friendship, and sacrifice. A story about selfishness and greed. Tell me a story of our home.”

Simple condensation. Like the city itself is sweating.

A commotion drew Crow’s attention down to the city streets. He watched Matthias and Brandy run panting and desperate down Shujen Street, with Candle slung over Brandy’s burly shoulder. Matthias, the young man who had traveled far from his village home to become a doctor, and Brandy, the retired soldier, still in his big blue officer’s coat despite his advancing years. Mick hobbled after them, his face flushed and twisted in a grimace, probably from having to run on his bad leg. In his hand, Crow caught a glimpse of gunmetal grey. Mick, everyone in Steam knew, despite his bad leg, was a very dangerous, very bad man. He worked for Mr. Genuine, the owner of the Cerulean Club and most of the Blackjack District. Crow had no idea what the odd pair of Brandy and Matthias could have done to attract Mick’s ire, but it didn’t truly matter. The stage was set, the characters introduced, and the show was about to begin. Crow’s smile widened and he closed his eyes.

“Go through the tea shop!” Brandy bellowed, his breath coming in heavy gasps. He tried to keep Candle’s unconscious body from jostling too much so that her shoulder wound didn’t start bleeding again.

“Which one?!” Matthias asked, clearly panicked. A sashimi vendor and his cart suddenly moved into his path and he was forced to go around it, much to the vendor’s consternation. “There’s like a million tea shops!”

“Pick one!” Brandy yelled impatiently. “Whichever one you like best! I don’t care!”

Matthias darted through the door into one of the many tea shops, marked by neon signs of twisted characters offering people some respite in the storms of their lives, lining either side of Shujen Street, the busy main drag of Little Edo. The patrons, dirty and sullen like most of the residents of Little Edo, looked up startled from their cups as Matthias dashed between the low-slung tables and towards the kitchen in the back, his sandals falling silently on the tatami mat floor. Brandy followed a moment later, far less gracefully than Matthias had, stumbling through one of the shoji screens that served as a wall. He did his best to try to protect Candle’s body, but he thought he felt her shift and feared the worst. He had no time to stop and check, though. Behind him he heard something that sounded like a person tripping over a table, followed by a curse.

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, Matthias, while not exactly nimble, was small enough to dodge the cook, clear the preparation table, and not bang his head on one of the many hanging braziers full of hot coals that heated the tea pots. Brandy was neither small nor nimble, and so when he entered the kitchen the cook was bowled over, a wooden table was flung to the side, and a corner of his own enormous handlebar moustache was briefly set aflame on one of the braziers. He managed to get out the back door and slam it closed right as the knife the chef had been using to gut a fish thudded into it with a barrage of angry chattering that Brandy couldn’t understand. He quickly licked his thumb and index finger and extinguished his moustache.

“That was too close,” Matthias panted, doubling over.

They both heard gunfire from inside.

“Might get even closer!” Brandy yelled, grabbing Matthias’ arm in his free hand and yanking the boy after him. “Run!”

They raced down the alley, the sounds of angry screaming and breaking china lending their cause speed. Matthias easily outpaced Brandy and, partly because he was so distracted and partly because he had never quite gotten used to the presence of the steamsleds, ran out into the middle of the street where the grooves run.

Matthias saw the sled bearing down on him at the last second. The many orange paper lanterns festooning it reminded him of eyes and made the sled look like some narrow iron dragon with a bow-shaped maw. His eyes widened as terror and then clenched shut. He heard a metallic squeal of the metal wheels in the groove and a shriek of steam being released and was sure that he was dead.

“Well?” an impatient, heavily-accented voice inquired. “Get on or non? Mos’ folk stick their hands out, not their whole body. I stop for that too, though. You’s lucky. I’s only one.”

The voice said ‘their’ like ‘dere’. Matthias opened his eyes slowly to find that the sled had managed to stop in time, if only barely. He looked up to a face so covered in soot and coal dust that there didn’t seem to be any features to identify, only a solid sheet of black. The owner of the face was leaning over the edge of the bow, smiling. Its teeth were pearly white and perfect.

“Get on or non?” it asked again, a little more gently.

“Getting on,” Brandy interjected, finally catching up. He began climbing the small side ladder. “Definitely getting on.”

“Come on then,” it said to Matthias, pronouncing it ‘den.’ “Climb on board Wastrel’s sled.”

Matthias realized that he hadn’t moved. He hauled himself up over the side of the sled and risked a look back over his shoulder as he did. He saw Mick, standing at the end of the alley, scanning the crowd frantically, but he couldn’t tell if he’d been spotted, for as soon as he got one leg over the guard rail the steamsled rocketed forward.

“Is all abou’ the destination these days,” Wastrel said cheerfully, saying ‘de’ and ‘dese’ respectively. “Non got time for a trip through Steam. ‘Get me there as fast as you can,’ they say. I tell you it makes non difference how quickly you get there. Fas’ or slow, this boat crashes, we all dead. Where you goin’ again?”

Brandy had to hunch over in his seat to avoid brushing his head on the canopy, and he shot Matthias a look as he settled into his seat. Matthias shrugged and started going through the bag at his hip, pulling items out. A bottle of iodine, a roll of bandages, and a tiny bottle of smelling salts. Brandy laid Candle out on one of the benches lining the inside of the sled, and Matthias went to work on her shoulder wound.

The driver shot a look at them from its seat, holding the cables that controlled the rudder easily in its hands. “Ah,” Wastrel said. “The pretty girl be injured, eh? Folk always wan’ hurt pretty girls, you notice that? Is there so much beauty in our world that we can afford to lost any of it? Not fair, but then, what is in Steam?”

“We’re going to Tsubom Street,” Brandy said suddenly, and Matthias looked up sharply from where he had been applying the iodine to the wound. Brandy met his eyes and nodded. “We’re going to Dr. Yon.”

“Brandy-” Matthias started, but was interrupted by Wastrel’s gleeful yell and a sudden lurch forward from the steamsled.

“We don’t have a choice,” Brandy said, sitting back and closing his eyes. “Unless you think you can take the bullet out of her shoulder?”

“No,” Matthias agreed bitterly. “I can clean this and rebandage it. I can shove her shoulder back into place, but I can’t take the bullet out.”

Brandy nodded quietly, and in a few minutes was breathing rhythmically. Matthias finished cleaning the wound and then fixed her shoulder with a sickening crack. Her breath came steadily enough, and her pulse seemed normal, he noted. He looked at the smelling salts on the bench, debating, and decided against it. He watched Little Edo go flashing by outside the sled, a blur of faces and neon and shoji, and enjoyed the wind whipping at his clothes and hair. It had been a very long time since he’d felt wind. There wasn’t any in Steam, the air was all fetid and still.

“How’d the little girl get so banged up?” Wastrel asked when he was done. “She in a fight?”

“Always,” Matthias chuckled. “But she doesn’t do it for herself. She tries to help people in Steam by offering them a safe place to go. And you’re lucky she’s asleep. Something tells me she wouldn’t take kindly to being called a ‘little girl.’”

Wastrel gave a great belly laugh and leaned into one of the cords, helping compensate for a particularly sharp turn in the groove.

“She your sweetheart?” the driver asked a few minutes later, and Crow smiled to himself in his alley.

“Oh gods no,” Matthias said, laughing. “Oh no. She’s just a friend. She runs a place in the Gato District. Candle’s Public House. It’s a nice bar. But no, she’s just a friend.”

“Well either way, s’like I’s said,” Wastrel put his feet up on the bow. “They ain’t enough beauty in this world to justify taking some of it out, so you make sure she get better, non?”

“That’s the plan,” Matthias said quietly, looking past Wastrel and seeing Tsubom Street up ahead. He nudged Brandy who came awake with a snort. “We’re here.”

“All right,” Brandy said, reaching into his coat. He pulled out his old service revolver, checked the rounds, and then closed it back up and put it away. “How much do we owe you?”

“Non, non,” Wastrel said, waving a hand and smiling that perfect smile. “We got here, I’s alive, you’s alive. That’s enough for me.”

Brandy nodded and winced as he slung Candle as gently as possible back over his shoulder, making sure her long blonde hair wasn’t caught on anything. He climbed down the ladder and onto the street, scanning it to make sure they were safe. Matthias grabbed his bag and hesitated. Finally, he took Wastrel’s hand in his and shook it.

“Thank you,” he said, letting go, but Wastrel held on and leaned in close.

“Remember,” the dirty steamsled driver said. “Remember what I’s said. I consider it a great service if you did.”

Matthias climbed down and the steamsled took off, turning precariously at the corner and then racing on noisily. Brandy and Mathias walked towards the building with the biggest neon sign on it, one with an exaggerated red cross on it. Tsubom Street was the wealthiest part of Little Edo, and Dr. Yon’s clinic fit right in. It looked more like the private residence of a rich man than a hospital, but then, Dr. Yon wasn’t like other doctors.

Some people suspected Dr. Yon of being an oni, a demon, but there were laws for handling that sort of thing, and Dr. Yon continued to operate. Rumor said that if you caught him in the right mood, and if there was a good solid price tag attached, then there was nothing he couldn’t do. Sometimes however, the rumors also said, “complications” occurred during the procedures. Fatal ones.

“Brandy, we can’t afford this,” Matthias pointed out.

“I know that,” Brandy said through gritted teeth, and he raised his fist and knocked on the door. “But we have to try anyway. Maybe we can work something out.”

A lamp came on inside, and after a few minutes the door creaked open, and they were met with a small pair of beady eyes that seemed almost to glow in the shadows from the street lamps. Dr. Yon had a small patch of black hair left on his head, and he wore it parted in the center. He was shorter than Matthias and quite portly, but his hands never shook.

“May I help you?” he asked innocently, in a sickeningly smooth voice.

“Dr. Yon, my name is Brandy. It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Brandy extended his hand, and after examining it Dr. You accepted the handshake. His grip was stronger than it should’ve been, Brandy thought. “This is Matthias. Our friend is hurt.”

Dr. Yon looked at the two of them, then at Candle, as if sizing all of them up, before opening the door. “Come in, come in,” he said, in a perfectly friendly and inviting way that entirely lacked warmth. “I can help her, I’m sure.”

Dr. Yon’s house and office was the nicest building either of them had ever been in, full of comfortable furniture and elaborate rugs, with solid wooden walls instead of the more common shoji. They were covered in pictures of himself and nobody else. In the lamplight of the foyer, they could see his eyes were actually a very pale blue. He led them down a staircase and into his clinic, a disinfected and sterile collection of white-washed rooms and stainless steel tables. The waiting room they were in had comfortable looking chair lining two of the walls, a door marked as a bathroom, and a single unmarked door that led back into the operating rooms, presumably. Dr. Yon turned on several gas lamps and gestured for them to have a seat.

“I will take care of her,” he said politely, holding his arms out to receive her body. “You may come back as soon as I am finished.”

Brandy paused. He was reluctant to hand Candle over to this man, if he was a man, but he steeled himself and placed her limp body into Dr. Yon’s arms. He seemed to have no trouble with her weight, and carried her easily through the door.

Matthias exhaled. “And now we wait?”

“Suppose so,” Brandy grumbled.

They sat in silence.

“This is wrong,” Matthias spoke up finally, looking over at Brandy. He didn’t say anything or even acknowledge that he’d heard, so Matthias pressed on recklessly. “Things would be different-”

There was a loud crash as Brandy stood up so violently that his chair was knocked over. Matthias flinched. “Where? Back home?!” Brandy screamed, his face flushed red with anger. “In that backwards little village you come from?! Well, why don’t you go back there, Matt?! Why don’t you leave me alone and go back there?!”

Brandy stood, his chest heaving, fists clenched, watching Matthias for a reaction. Finally, he picked his chair back up, sat down heavily, and buried his face in his hands. Matthias didn’t say anything for the rest of the wait. It was two hours before Dr. Yon opened the door and announced that one of them could come see her. When Matthias didn’t move, Brandy got up and walked through the door. After he left, Matthias went to the bathroom.

Dr. Yon led Brandy through the first door, into another sterile, whitewashed room with cabinets lining the wall. On a table in the center lay Candle, her shirt off but with a gown covering her modestly, and a fresh, clean bandage over her shoulder.

“Everything went fine,” Dr. Yon said, sounding pleased with himself. He was facing away from Brandy, taking his surgical gloves off and laying them on a table full of metal instruments that Brandy thought he’d seen in a torture chamber once when he was in the army. “There is, of course, the matter of payment.”

“Well that’s…kind of a problem,” Brandy started, hands uncomfortably in the pockets of his big blue military coat. “We uh, don’t have much money, strictly speaking, but we were hoping we could work something out. A payment plan, maybe.”

Dr. Yon grew very still. Brandy couldn’t see his expression, but he imagined it was probably pretty angry. “Oh no,” Dr. Yon said softly, sounding distracted. “Oh, that won’t do at all.”

The room seemed to grow darker, and Dr. Yon seemed to grow bigger, somehow.

“Or we could get an extension, maybe? You don’t do anything like that?” Brandy asked desperately.

“No, no,” Dr. Yon said. “We don’t do anything like that.”

In one fluid, inhuman motion he twisted around completely at the waist and came at Brandy, his shark teeth bared and his filed-down nails clawing for anything. His eyes seemed lit by infernal fires.

Brandy’s old service revolver was in his hand before Dr. Yon stopped speaking, and now it went off three times.

Matthias came out of the bathroom to find Mick sitting in one of the comfortable waiting room chairs, a burlap sack in the chair next to him, dripping some dark colored liquid onto the beautiful, expensive carpet. Mick toyed carelessly with the gun in his hand, cocking the hammer back and easing it back into place, over and over again. Matthias froze, and they stared at each other, neither one breaking the silence.

“You’re here to kill her,” Matthias said, his voice shaking along with the rest of him.

Mick didn’t move.

Matthias’ eyes darted to the sack. “What’s that?”

“Steamsled driver,” Mick said, his voice like wheels on gravel. “Dirty little fellow with a funny accent.”

“Oh,” Matthias said.

“Yeah,” Mick agreed.

Neither one of them said anything or made a single move for a full three minutes. “She doesn’t deserve to die,” Matthias said finally, unable to stop himself.

Mick cocked his head to one side, resting the barrel of his gun against one temple. “How do you figure?”

“Because…” Matthias struggled to find the words. “Because she’s pretty, and there aren’t enough pretty things in the world that people like you can just go around breaking them! There’s so much ugliness in this damn city, so much darkness hiding in all the light, so many animals waiting for someone to show a sign of weakness so they can all pounce. This city doesn’t care about its people and these people don’t care about their city, but Candle cares! That’s why she stands out in defiance of this cold, dark, iron world. She wants to show them that there’s a better way. So you can kill her, and me, and Brandy if you want to, but that won’t change the fact that we’re trying to make this place better. So go ahead, be Steam, take us and tear us apart, and we’ll be steam too. We’ll vanish into the air, and no one will wonder, or miss us, and you can enjoy your hell.”

Mick just sat there, looking pensive. Matthias waited, still too afraid to make a move, despite everything he’d just said. Finally, Mick stood up, and the arm holding the gun dropped to his side. He stepped slowly towards Matthias. He straightened his arm, and pressed the gun against Matthias’ forehead. The metal felt cold, and soothing, and Matthias felt ready. Mick pulled the trigger, and Matthias heard a click, and waited. Back on his roof on Shujen Street, Crow looked up at the sky and whistled in surprise.

Mick turned and limped away, towards the stairs leading up into the house, and as he passed the sack in the chair, he left three bullets on top of it. He shot Matthias a knowing smile over his shoulder as he did so. Then he was gone.

Three gunshots split the air from behind Yon’s closed door and Matthias rushed back into the operating room. He found Brandy sitting on the floor of the operating room, his gun clutched in white fingers, the end of the barrel smoking slightly. Across the room was a twisted body that didn’t even look vaguely human. Candle lay untouched on the table, and as he looked over her, her eyelids fluttered and opened.

Crow stood up and stretched broadly, then dusted his pants off.

“Not bad, little district,” he chuckled to himself. “A happy ending. In Steam? Who’d have guessed.”