Читать книгу The Paper Man - Gallagher Lawson - Страница 10

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THE OTHER PEDESTRIANS HAD BEEN PREPARED. THEY POPPED open their parasols, which had been conveniently stowed inside their bags, strapped to their belt buckles, or in their hands. Everyone had the same style: a short, wooden handle with black fabric for the canopy. A few men loosely tented newspapers over their heads and dashed for cover. A stocky woman lowered the hood of her stroller and tightened the blankets around a baby. The only parts of the baby that could be seen were its hands, in motion like little pincers. Small nomadic groups of hooded people were headed in all directions—he had no sense which way led to the best place for shelter. Some hid indoors; some huddled beside a bus stop with a small overhang only large enough to cover a bench that could seat three. He stepped into the crosswalk and tried to duck under other people’s umbrellas. Underneath them, the stiff faces of the umbrella owners glared at him, recoiled, and hurried on.

It was summer time. Weren’t the rains over after spring? But then he realized he was assuming the rest of the world was like the inland. The inland: known for hot, dry summers and wet winters and springs. The city had its own climate, and he couldn’t believe that he had not thought of this before.

Every minute the rain seemed to transform. It started as fat sporadic drops of water, splashing dark dots on the sidewalk and pavement. Then a wind blew in from the sea and shifted the drops to assault people and buildings horizontally. And then the drops turned into drizzle, finally settling on a steady shower. The rain felt warmer than the surrounding air, the clash of temperatures making the streets muggy. Wind picked up and set flight to loose leaves of newspaper across the street. Wheels of cars mirrored the wind, spraying beads of liquid from their tires, like moving sprinkler heads. Taxis honked and bus brakes squeaked. In the distance he saw a small traffic jam at an intersection. A man, his mustache dripping with rain, was yelling at a driver. He stood waving his deflated umbrella and spoke in a language that Michael did not recognize.

The gray cloud cover muted the colors of everything—except the blue trash cans on street corners, which seemed like columns of topaz; gray glass and gray walls; gray pavement, tinged with the swirling rainbow and starbursts of oil slicks; and the rolling water that stretched down the gutters like gray tentacles.

Michael grabbed a newspaper from the bus stop and tented it over his head. A new learned behavior. He was briefly excited for this innovation he had acquired. His jacket and shirt were damp. His detached arm snug in its sleeve. Water was something he had learned to avoid over the years. Whenever it rained inland, there always was a clear sign. The clouds would collect and darken in one spot of the sky, or they could be seen migrating from a distance, rolling forward like sheep. Here, it was as if the sky had suddenly given in to the weight of the water. Like nature’s accounting: the credit of water in the air had transferred to the debit column of raindrops.

Up ahead, he could just make out through low-lying clouds the verdant hill and its luminous lighthouse. Far behind him were the highway and the bus accident. He had no plans to return. He had no entry form, no luggage, no money. But those things didn’t matter right now.

He followed a few soaking people to a teahouse. Yet he was too late—the teahouse was packed, and the wet pedestrians who were pressed against the window steamed up the glass from their neverending supply of body heat. A crowd indoors seemed like a place where he could have blended in and waited out the storm. Michael reached for the door handle, but a crinkle-nosed waitress saw him. She shook her head and shut the lock on the door.

“Please,” he said. He knocked on the glass. “Please let me in for a minute.”

She had tired eyes that might have been kind had she not been squashed in a room full of anxious people. She mouthed something. He stared. She mouthed it again and walked away. No more room.

Another restaurant kicked him out when he admitted he had no money and asked only to use the bathroom. Sorry, the waitress had said, the bathroom is for customers only. He sputtered a laugh. How funny that she would think he wanted to expel things from his body when all he was trying to do was keep his body intact. At another street corner, he passed the display window of a department store. The lights clicked off as he walked by. He scurried ahead to the entrance, where a few customers ran out into the rain. A biscuit-faced little girl stepped in a puddle that splashed onto her socks. She screamed—a mix of shock and delight. A new sensation, around his neck, extended to his waist. When he peered inside his jacket, he found a river of ink and paint that started at his neck trickling down his torso. He was losing his color. A taxi pulled up, and the girl and her distracted mother climbed in. As she was shutting the door, the girl paused and stared at Michael. Her eyes were large like goggles. She pointed and Michael turned away, embarrassed. While adults were too absorbed in their own lives and situations, children were always the first to notice when something or someone wasn’t right. The mother’s tapering arm around the girl’s shoulder drew her in, and then she slammed the taxi door. He realized he must look like a monster to them, falling apart in the rain.

The door to the department store: locked. The place had closed. This time when he let go of his detached arm, it fell out of his jacket sleeve. He stuffed it back inside. Did bad weather always affect the city like this? He didn’t understand why everything was closed or full. It had been so long since he’d been in a city, he didn’t know the protocol. If only he’d had more time to learn it. Why did it have to rain his first day here? He leaned against the building next to him, but there was no cover above, and each minute he felt his body grow heavier—liquid seeping inside his paper skin.

The rain was relentless now, punishing him—it seemed—for entering the city. Hardly anyone was on the street. A bus arrived at its stop across the way, and a small shivering crowd boarded. Michael ran over, and the water that his feet kicked up soaked into his legs.

“Please, I need to board, but I don’t have any money,” Michael said to the bus driver. “I’ll pay you back.”

“Get lost!” The driver scoffed and waved him off. Michael stood back as the bus drove away, generating a wave of water that shot out of the gutter and across Michael’s legs. Inside, the windows immediately steamed with the breath of passengers. He suddenly missed the relative comfort of the motorbus he had been in earlier that day. His vision began to blur, and the falling rain blended with the cement to create a giant sheet of gray surrounding him. A moment later, he was able to see clearly again. Behind him, on the bench and under the awning, a fidgeting man with an open, saffron-colored mouth was trying to curl up.

“Find your own bench,” the man scowled before Michael had time to speak, exposing his gapped teeth and releasing foul-smelling breath. His hands were claws nearly as terrifying as the rain.

The sunlight faded; darkness filled the city, and the rain bit like sharp teeth. He looked up. Another drop in his eye. Perhaps this was how the one-eyed man had been blinded—he had stared into the sky and something had fallen, something as simple as a raindrop but with just the right composition to destroy his sight.

His detached arm felt like putty in his other hand. Michael started to run, spotting an alley ahead that he hoped could provide cover. There he located a dumpster, and for a moment, he recognized the fact that he was willing to hide inside it. Had his life this quickly come to this? But the lid was locked. His feet had become heavy, like bricks that he had to drag. A man in an elegant trench coat passed the alley, and Michael put out his good hand, already bent in a pose familiar to any beggar. There had to be one person who would help.

“Please, do you have any cover?” he mumbled, but the man casually veered away from him without stopping.

He would not hold up much longer. In the strange painless way his body worked, it was telling him he was falling to pieces. The visions of blurred surroundings came in stronger waves. Soon, he thought, he might be blind.

A cluster of umbrellas marched past him and disappeared around the corner. There were no trees on this street. No awnings, no overhead covers. The only trees visible were north, on the hill, too far away. There would be nothing left of him by then. And so he reluctantly headed south, past the locked doors and occupied benches, where further along the street Michael finally found hope: a large bridge that scalloped along the city skyline. He used a building wall to support himself but then saw that he was smearing a streak of black ink across the stucco. His painted fingernails were gone; he now had white tips for fingers—it was as if he was seeing bone. His legs became as heavy as bags of coffee beans. Yet a voice inside remained optimistic: a few more steps.

It was an extreme effort to make it across the street. The water was ankle deep, and his feet became heavier with each step. The water seeped up his legs. He was absorbing it fast, and he only saw everything below him as one mass of dark colors. He rushed to the bridge. To avoid a large puddle, he had to go back a half block to find a spot where he could cross onto the sidewalk. Then he ran, past discarded wrappers of trash and bones of dead fish that had been glued to the uneven pavement and were now being loosened and were floating away.

Under the bridge he celebrated deep breaths of dry air. He loosened his tie and squeezed out some water, but his body was too heavy. He fell to his knees on the curb and had to steady himself. It might be too late. The water was inside him, and he had become a sponge. His detached arm fell out of his sleeve again. He gave in to the weight and lay on the sidewalk. Above him, several rats and a flock of pigeons huddled near the stone arches. He felt strangely at ease. Just to make it to the city seemed like enough of an accomplishment. Perhaps that was all he was meant for. Or perhaps all along he had made a terrible mistake. He thought about the rare times it rained inland. How was it possible, he wondered, to be awake and aware of his body disintegrating before his own eyes? Inland he had watched the rain coat the coffee bushes and form the small streams that flowed between them, never afraid of the rain because he was always inside, safe behind the glass of a window. Two contrasting worlds connected by clear material. Here there was no glass.

Just then, the glowing headlights of a bus materialized through the curtain of rain, roared along under the bridge, and splashed a large puddle that had formed in the gutter and spread into the street. It coated him with slime and debris and shoved him to the ground. He vomited water. As he leaned over, in the small puddle forming before him he saw the reflected outline of his face—it was not a shape he recognized. Perhaps his ability to see details had permanently vanished.

He thought he might be able to step out of his body and suddenly be so light that he could fly like a pigeon in the rain. The drops would roll off his wings and he would find that apartment in the high rise he was meant to live in, and below he would see the mash of pulp and pile of clothes he had once been. He would only need to splatter open the spot inside himself that would liberate those qualities capable of transforming him.

On the ground, he was dying—he was certain of it—pulpifying. The few details visible were rats and pigeons watching with their small, reflective eyes. One of the rats broke from the group and ran across him, sniffing like the uniformed inspectors on the bus. Then, emerging from the mist that shrouded the bridge, a vague pair of thin human legs approached. Someone had been out in the storm longer than him. No one here would help him, he had decided, so he thought it best to blend in with the surroundings and let the pedestrian on his way.

He didn’t have the strength to move. The pedestrian would have to either step over him or—more likely—on him. His mouth opened. The person approaching was wearing high heels. Above, she had a strangely shaped head—but then he realized she was covering herself with some kind of square or panel. The panel was removed and lowered toward him. Then softness—fur—brushed him with gentle strokes.

She was doing him a favor. He was sure of it. She was going to suffocate him and put him out of his misery. He wanted to say thank you, but his mouth would not close for him to speak. The fur moved across his face; he coughed once, and realized he had stopped breathing. A moment later, he closed his eyes.