Читать книгу Panopticon - David Bajo - Страница 21

It was like looking into a mirror and seeing everything but himself. Klinsman felt this sensation as an upward rush through his nerves, like that hot push of venom. At first he sensed himself erased, then somehow sucked underneath—to the place this park used to be, to the time when he ran the fields, racing his youth, his brothers and sisters. This spot, this stone bench, marked where they used to have tomato fights after the last harvest, ducking and firing among the endless rows, soaked and smelling sweet with rot. The gull-like cries from the men playing Mexican Nines only enhanced that feeling, echoes draping him.

Not far from his bench, work had been done on a sprinkler. A worker had peeled back the turf and neatly piled a small amount of excess dirt to be removed later. Klinsman fetched a clump from the pile and brought it back to the table. He sat and eyed the clod as you would a precious gem. The dirt just beneath the topsoil of the ranch was this hard red composite, a little brighter than brick, a little duller than blood. When Viking sent pictures of the Martian landscape back to Earth, Connie said the rocks looked just like the clods she liked to throw at him right after the deep fall plowing. Klinsman placed the red clump carefully beside his laptop. The online feed still showed him disappeared.

He straightened his shoulders, looked away from the screen and into the blue above the far ocean, blinked, sought reason. The screen remained the same when he looked back, this stone table and bench empty, its shadows cast the same way on the grass, the same sprinkler cap to the side, the same dandelions quivering in the sea breeze. He waved his arms, trying to make himself appear. He clicked around to the other cameras, found the game of Mexican Nines. He clicked his way back to the near camera and still found himself gone.

Now a coldness slithered in him. He wanted to call Rita. He wanted to call Oscar. He wanted to call his brother Azariah. Or even Connie, so far away. He lifted his cell and crooked his thumb.

A shadow fell over him, paused him.

A young man stood above him, close enough to shield the noon sun.

“Don’t do that,” he said with a slight Latino accent, not enough force on his T’s. “You lose connection.”

Klinsman placed the cell down gently beside the laptop, maintaining connection. On the screen the man, like Klinsman, did not appear. This made him feel a little better.

He looked the young man over, angling off the overhead sun to get a better close-up. He was far too skinny for the dark suit coat he wore. The coat had stylized shoulders, razor sharp at the corners, sliding. His black hair was mussed and barely shifted in the breeze, and his lips hung slightly parted, as though he had allergies. He wore thick-rimmed glasses, chef’s pants, and mismatched shoes, one brown loafer, one black wingtip. He had a newly sprung mushroom color and smell about him.

“Could I?” He nodded to Klinsman’s laptop, open to the sky on the stone table.

Klinsman offered with his hand, and the youth hunched eagerly toward the screen. His hands were long and thin and moved like dragonflies over the keyboard. His touch was very light, making almost no sound, the burble of a little stream.

The game of Mexican Nines came up onscreen. One more flit and burble over the keys and the players disappeared, the courts empty but for the shadows of backboards and hoops.

Klinsman scrunched his brow.

“It’s just yesterday’s feed,” said the young man, adjusting his glasses. “Mixto. Mixed in.” His throat was the color of the inside of a seashell.

Klinsman’s brow remained furrowed. “But the passive feeds …you can’t get the old feeds.”

The young man looked at him, then at the game of Mexican Nines, then at the empty courts on screen.

“But you can,” said Klinsman.

The youth shook his head. “No. Not me.”

Klinsman looked him over again, starting with the mismatched shoes, ending with the pointed shoulders of his jacket. Klinsman switched to Spanish, ending with the plural “you.” “Tú, no. Pero ustedes, sí”

The young man gazed steadily at Klinsman, breathed gently through his lips.

“You nombre?” asked Klinsman.

“Douglas,” the young man replied. “Douglas Cook. We want you to leave us out of your story.”

“What story?”

“The third one on your list. Your last story.”

“How do you know my list?” Klinsman stood, keeping one knee on the bench, a hand over the keyboard. The mozo’s eyes were very dark, very steady.

“How I know where to find you?” The young man opened his thin hand, like spun sugar. “Like this? Right here, ahorita?”

“Who is ‘we’?” Klinsman looked around, at the sky, at the empty grass of the park where the barn used to stand.

The young man smiled, an almost flat spread of his lips, amused at the very ends. “That would put us into your story.”

“I won’t put you in.” Klinsman gazed steadily at him. “As you will see. I don’t even want to write the story. I’ll make one up. Like I always do.”

Klinsman held his fingers above the red dirt clod. “See? For me, it’s more about this. What’s underneath. That’s what I’ll write about.”

The young man picked up the clump and held it to the sunlight. Then he slipped it into the pocket of his coat, nodded once, and turned to leave, hunched, hands slung into pockets.

“But what could you do if I did?” Klinsman asked. “If I did put you into the story?”

Douglas Cook, a trembling compass needle, spun toward the laptop. His fingers flashed over the keys, thumb stinging once at the end. The image of their park bench returned to the screen. In this one the young man appeared, in the same coat but with his mismatched shoes reversed. Klinsman was not there.