THE BIKES OF NEW YORK
Chester Burton Brown
Smashwords Edition copyright 2012 Matthew Hemming, Publisher; all rights reserved.
Read more from this author at CheeseburgerBrown.com
License Notes: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
1.
I don’t know where he goes when he’s on the bikes, and neither do you. But you can tell he’s somewhere: the far away look in his eyes is unmistakable.
Luc Drapeau pedals the spinning world beneath his wheels, but never moves an inch. He pedals straight to Kingdom Come.
You may or may not think twice about him as you pass. You’re on your way to work, or on your way home. You might be thinking about supper or taxes, underwear models or overdue bills. If you’re social you might afford him a nod or a smile as he sweats for loose change, going nowhere, eyes at infinity. You don’t feel very guilty. At least he’s got the bikes, you reason.
Better the bikes than a beggar.
Luc Drapeau recognizes you. You might not know it, but it’s true. He’s far away but he’s not gone. He knows the hours by your transits. Maybe he counts you, like sheep.
He sees the cars, too, what few remain. Do you remember when even the widest boulevards were thick with them on a Sunday afternoon? Now we all mosey along in liquid herds, stepping aside for the rare vehicle, warned by the conspicuous whine of its engine interrupting the scrapes and murmurs of purely human noise.
Luc Drapeau grunts, sitting up straighter as his pedaling tapers off to a ghost of a motion. He lets his cleats drop off the pedals, the pedals shudder to a halt. Through his thighs he feels the wheels fly on for a few seconds, lost in their own far away place of inertia.
But nothing’s free: the bike quivers as the wheels stop.
Luc licks his lips. The bike box buzzes. He reaches out his cupped hands, which shake either from exertion or anticipation or both. He receives a small slurry of brown coins: silver and bimetallics, etched in grime.
He puts the coins in a zippered pocket that stashes inside his shorts. Wouldn’t you?
That’s his day of work. He’s made his kilowatt quota. Other unfortunates pedal on but Luc Drapeau has a baby at home, and a wife who prays for better days. He wants to see them so he doesn’t forget what being alive is for. He needs to see them so he knows why to get back on a bike tomorrow.
He wants to feel lucky. God knows we want him to feel lucky, so we don’t feel so much like pigs. It isn’t our fault the machine of the West staggered. The wiles of the worlds’ economies continue to elude even the craftiest AIs, so who are we to pretend we saw it coming? Maybe it’s karma, maybe it’s cruel—some of us just got off better than others when the bottom fell out of the world.
So you and I have jobs, and if we didn’t we could ride the bikes like Luc Drapeau. We could stake out a favourite ride in a public square or the concrete parkette skirt of any commercial concern. The bikes are everywhere, after all. Every institution needs power, and so many people need coins.
They say it’s an urban legend but it isn’t: if you put your ear to the asphalt of a major avenue at a quiet hour of the night you can actually detect the murmuring spin of the great underground flywheels. The bikes feed their motion. So does the bouncing sidewalk beneath your feet, pumping the city to life.
Do you remember when they used to light up the buildings all the way to the top, even at night? Nowadays the only thing up there is the endlessly replicated silhouette of the wind turbines, turning and turning and turning. The tips of the city’s fingers are dark. Nobody wants to move conditioned air up that high anymore. There just aren’t enough bikes.
It’s hot.
Luc Drapeau is even hotter. He strips as he walks, peeling off all but his worn cycling shorts. He leaves a trail of sweat droplets on the pavement that evaporate with thirsty haste.
He stops for water at the corner of St. Urbain and Rue Jacques Parizeau. An old Jewish bird runs a fountain there. You’ve probably never drank there—it’s local, nestled in the alley next to a cat farm. She doesn’t serve strangers. “Monsieur Drapeau!” she cheers, smiling toothlessly.
“Madame,” mutters Luc, nodding as he takes a cup from the rack.
If we did happen to stumble in there, you or I would have to pay in advance. But she tallies up Luc’s draught only when he’s sated, and because she’s a sweetheart she always knocks a couple of milliliters off. She has a secret crush on the dimples in Luc Drapeau’s buttocks.
“Merci,” he whispers, putting his money on the counter and turning to go.
“À demain,” she says, eyes flicking down.
The sun is setting. The streets are emptying. There are few lamps anymore, and the darkness is a threat to some and an opportunity to others. The changeover in ecosystems is heralded by a hurrying in the pace of people. They all want to be at home, no matter what home is.
Luc Drapeau’s home is a hole in the wall. The bed folds out of the ceiling, but it’s never folded up. Luc opens the door and takes off his street shoes before climbing up on the bed, then turns awkwardly to close the door behind him.
He strives to be quiet. His wife sleeps beside his son, curled into a tight cocoon in the blankets. She’s left out a candle and match for Luc, as well as a package of dinner.
He pulls the tab, hears the contents start to sizzle.
Dimly through the walls he perceives the bass peal of cathedral bells echoing across twilit Montréal, announcing the hour. Luc winds the radio and puts on earphones. The national service is playing Debussy.
He puts his coins on the pillow, next to his wife’s head.
2.
On Saturday afternoons Luc Drapeau and his family take a stroll through Mount Royal park, Luc’s legs quaking from his morning on the bikes. The road is strewn with blossoms, in places mashed green patties thick enough to advertise the brand names of shoes, logos stamped in the pulp. Birds sing, because nothing can stop the birds. It’s spring so they sing extra loud.
“What is it, Celise?” he asks again.
“Nothing,” she says again. She’s waiting for the right moment.
They carry parasols, just like you and I do. Even though they’re poor there are some things that are indisputable necessities these days, like shea butter and almond oil for sunblock; like sunglasses; like multivitamins and condoms. You find money for those things, sometimes even before you find money for food. I do, too.
The hillside watermongers can fuck right off. Luc Drapeau ignores them pointedly. They prey on the thirsty, profiteer rather than ride or work. They sell trick bottles that magnify the content, and the content could be somebody’s piss. They look for suckers. They look for people who don’t know better—class tourists. Me, maybe. Maybe you. Luc they leave alone.
At the crest beneath the great crucifix a six piece brass band has adapted Berlioz. The baby squeals and cranes his head, threatening to spill free. A ring of listeners sit in the grass. An old man pretends to conduct. Celise stops the pram and drops her shoulders, grinning.
Luc wanders close and fishes a brown dime from his pocket. His wife catches his eye, questioning.
“Music, Celise,” he says quietly but firmly. “Music.”
She hesitates before nodding. He closes his eyes and drops the coin in the brass band’s hat. The trombone player salutes during a two measure rest, and the tuba player winks behind his mouthpiece.
Luc gives them a tight little smile.
Montréal is spread out beneath them, wavering under a scintillating blanket of ochre haze. A brace of flycycle gliders are out, white dots sailing between the skyscrapers. Probably the cops. The tallest towers pierce the haze in their thirst for the sun, the fans at their pinnacles beating silently. Between the buildings glisten the new canals.
“Luc,” says his wife, touching his shoulder. He turns around. She says, “Something wonderful has happened.”
He raises his brow. “Celise?”
“Our prayers have been answered,” she says. “I have a message from Cousin Philip. He says he has arranged a job.”
Luc blinks. “A job?” he echoes dumbly. “...A task?” he adds, letting a note of cynicism enter his voice.
“A job,” says his wife, her cheeks colouring. “A salary,” she says.
Luc is on top of the world. He picks up his wife and swings her around. He scoops his son out of the pram and kisses him until the boy gasps for breath between giggles. The brass band’s number winds to a close and everyone applauds.
“There is only one thing,” says his wife, biting the inside of her cheek.
Luc gently lays the baby in the pram, looks up, his lids heavy. “What is this one thing?” he asks quietly.
“The job is not in Montréal,” says Celise.
“Where is it?”
“It’s in New York City.”
“New York City?”
“Yes.”
“Tabernac.”
“Luc!”
He paces in a small circle, chin in his palm. “I don’t see how it’s possible, Celise. How could we do this? How would we get there? Even if we did, we would be immigrants. We might as well try to get into Canada.”
“Philip will help us. He’s arranged everything. He knows how smart you are, Luc. He wants you there.”
Luc sighs. He pinches the bridge of his nose, eyes closed. Is this salvation or damnation? At first blush they both smell the same, both starting from a knot of fear deep down in his stomach.
Celise takes his hand. “We can’t stay here, Luc. You know it. The Republic is suffocating. Every day there are more turning to the bikes. It can’t go on forever.”
He nods. He tracks birds as they wheel across the sky, gliding from wind wave to wind wave. “I know,” he says hollowly.
A blue and white flag snaps in the breeze, its line jingling against the flagpole. The baby fusses.
“It’s time to go home,” says Luc. “We should start packing,” he adds.
Celise drops her head against the base of his neck, snuggling against a film of rasping stubble. “I love you,” she breathes. Luc puts his arms around her, rocks her gently side to side.
“I dream of never having to ride again,” he says.
“Your dream is coming true,” she tells him tenderly. “Just you wait and see: in New York, everything will be different.”
3.
Imagine Luc Drapeau arriving in New York.
Imagine how a man from a sinking ruin must feel to see a city soar. The streets aren’t clogged with hunched shoulders, they teem with frenetic obstinance—hard pride rather than mute consolation, ambition over Christ, strategy before tradition. Where Montréal mourns New York is vital.
There are cars, and some of the skyscrapers are lit two thirds of the way up: candles of affluence, torches of hope.
On Cousin Philip’s card Luc takes transit instead of walking to his first day of work. He rides a commuter tram down Columbus as the sun is cresting the high-rises and suffusing the island with an amber glow that signals the start of daytime life. He gawks at mundane things and smiles at people. He is studiously ignored. He almost misses his stop. “Hé, arrêtez!” he cries, flailing for the exit. “Stop, s’il-vous-plaît!”
When he hops off to the graffitoed landing the departing tram splashes his pantlegs with pure Manhattan swill, humming to itself as it goes. It clangs its bell to hurry the passage of a line of livestock. The sheep are startled, and so is Luc.
On these streets Luc is livestock, and so are we all. Within a quarter hour of dawn the throngs have thickened into a purposefully coursing, semi-permeable river of meat and cloth and chatter.
He shuffles forward, pushed from behind. He cranes his head to take in the panorama of high walkways connecting the buildings above, reflections glistening below in the canals between them, plied by dozens upon dozens of bright yellow gondolas piloted by brown-faced, hard-nosed gondoliers. They pole with purpose, ferrying the high and mighty to Wall Street in a steady rush south. They shout the financial conditions to one another, vying for audibility over the gondoliers’ report on the tide and the cries of the streetside wallahs hawking their wares. “Hot dog! Newsfeed! Recharge!”
And there he is, Luc Drapeau, feeling the throb of civilization through the soles of his shoes.
It isn’t his imagination, for in Manhattan every sidewalk bounces to harness every footfall for the public pool, every recoil channeled to the island’s banks of flywheels turning underground. It’s rush hour at Penn Station that keeps Lady Liberty’s torch glowing; it’s Saturday in Times Square that lets the Freedom Tower shine.
The air becomes stifling as the sun rises higher. Luc blinks and consults his mental map again: he walks another block east, crosses a bridge clotted with bovine commuters on foot, comes out into a mildly flooded plaza. The plaza is filled with bikes, the uniform noise of their work rising like a nest of bees.
Luc walks through the field of them, feeling like a free man.
The riders sweat and sometimes grunt. They gulp as they drink hard-won water. They do not let their pace slacken. To lose momentum is to let joules fall down the well. Waste not, waste not.
I barely pay them any mind when I walk to work, and you probably don’t either. Luc luxuriates in this disconnection we take for granted. He relishes it, tickled inside. He wants to laugh out loud.
The family’s last nickel has been spent on his new suit. He feels glamourous. He feels tall.
He climbs the steps into the lobby, nods cheerfully to a blue police robot while he’s scanned, then presents his papers to the dour doorman with a crisp flourish. “Goodmorning, sir!” he says in his best American accent.
The doorman frowns, shifts his weapon against his hip. “I’m going to swipe your card, okay? Do you understand me?”
“Sure, I speak fluid the English,” claims Luc. He attempts to retrieve his card by reaching into his pants, which causes the doorman to interject heatedly. He points his weapon at Luc’s groin while Luc slowly extracts his zippered pouch.
“Throw it on the ground,” says the doorman.
“Are you serious?” asks Luc. “My wife give that to me.”
“I don’t know what’s in there, okay?” says the doorman. A queue begins to jam up behind Luc. People complain to one another. The doorman stares into Luc’s eyes. “I’m going to have to ask you to throw it on the ground at this time.”
Luc is sweating. “My card is what’s in there. Also my wife’s cousin’s card. A few loose change.”
The doorman’s eyes widen in alarm and his crewcut black hair seems to quiver on his sloped head. He raises his weapon and points it at Luc’s forehead. He barks, “Why do you have your cousin’s wife’s card?”
“My wife’s cousin’s card for the transit,” stammers Luc. “It was for me a favour...”
The queue behind him dissipates in search of other entrances. Luc and his interlocutor stand like stones in a river, diverting the flow, hemmed in by grumbling eddies.
“Now you’re changing your story,” says the doorman. “First it was this one’s card, now it’s another one’s. You expect me to believe a status card gets you on the downtown tram at this point?”
“It is a card for the tram. A tram card!”
“Let me tell you here and now that you’re not getting into this building without a status card,” says the doorman, relaxing his weapon a trifle. “We don’t accept tram cards.”
“The status card is also in this pocket.”
The doorman shouts, “Do not reach for your pocket at this time. Is that clear?”
The weapon is aimed between Luc’s eyes again. He whispers, “This pocket in my hand.”
The doorman narrows his eyes shrewdly. “Yours or your cousin’s?”
“My hand, my status card.”
“Okay,” he agrees reluctantly, lowering his arm. “At this time I need you to throw that pouch on the ground for me, sir.”
Luc sighs.
Cousin Philip’s office is a wonder: floor to ceiling windows overlooking Manhattan, the filigree of embedded solar collectors barely visible in the expensive glass. Down below the streets are clouded in yellowish murk, the pedestrian traffic a vague blur of parasols. Luc turns from the view as Philip walks in. “Luc!” he says as he flashes a pearly smile.
“Philip, how are you?”
“I’m so glad you made it,” says Philip, pumping his hand with a soft, uncalussed palm. Philip has become fat, a rarity these days outside the field of politics. His skin is pink and untanned. “Everything’s well with Celise, the baby?”
“Yes, yes indeed. Thank you for all your arrangements.”
Philip waves his hand dismissively, his cufflinks glittering. “Never mind that, Luc. Once you get your first paycheque we’ll get you out of that boarding house and into a real flat—something wired. How does that sound?”
Luc is stunned. “Electricity in the home?”
“Things are getting better every day,” says Philip, which is his company’s slogan. “America is recovering, Luc, and New York is on the leading edge. We’re paving the way for the West. Necessity is the mother of invention, after all, and we’re showing the world just how inventive America can be.”
“The business she is doing well, then?”
Philip chuckles as he crosses the office. “Are you pulling my leg, cousin? Have you even looked at our numbers lately? We’re going to own this city, Luc.” He pauses beside an ornate humidor on his desk and extracts two cigars. “And after that—the world. Cigar?”
“Thank you.”
Philip smacks a match against its box and holds out the flame for Luc, then puffs his own smoke to life. “I haven’t forgotten the work you did for my father back in Québec. I know what kind of a shark you are. I also know things have been bad for you for a while, but they’re going to turn around. You’re with us, now. Welcome to your new life.”
Luc loiters by the window, eyes cast down into the haze. He is lost in a daydream of impossible delights until he notices a squadron of vehicles cruising across the bike plaza. A moment later a flycycle glider swoops past the glass, making him jump. “Something is going on,” he observes.
“Eh?” grunts Philip, blowing smoke rings.
“There’s many police outside.”
Philip frowns. He walks over and touches his forehead to the glass, looking down into the plaza. He licks his lips, the cigar hanging forgotten out of the corner of his mouth. “Oh, shit,” says Philip drily.
“Shit?” echoes Luc.
“Shit, shit, shit,” reiterates Philip, the colour draining from his jowls. He turns around and picks up a telephone on his desk, stabbing at the buttons. “Security: situation report. Oh. Oh, shit.”
“Philip?” asks Luc, brow raised.
The door of Philip’s office bursts open. Police in black uniforms and riot masques stomp inside and point their weapons at Philip and Luc while pressing their faces into the top of Philip’s desk. Their cards are grabbed and scanned, their fingers pricked and drops of their blood slotted into a hand-cranked identifier. The identifier beeps ominously.
One of the officers flips up his visor and announces crisply, “Philip Beaudoin, you are under arrest for waste fraud. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or transmit can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to access a legal intelligence and to engage said entity via telepresence during questioning. If you cannot afford access to a legal intelligence, one will be appointed to represent you.”
“Shit,” says Philip again. He is hauled to his feet, and he casts Luc a glum shrug just before the hood comes down over his head. His wrists are manacled—click, click, click.
The officer holding Luc looks up. “What about this one?”
The one with the identifier shakes her head. “Import worker from the Protectorate. He’s nothing.”
And he is: he’s nothing. Luc wanders down the stairwell with all of the other nothings, mills in the lobby watching the executives and managers of Philip’s company marched blindly by braces of cops out to waiting cars, blue bubble-lights spinning and flashing blandly.
Luc feels little. The morning’s dizzying flight from ecstasy to desolation has left him numb. His mouth still tastes like cigar smoke—woody and rich. It’s a dream, a nightmare, a cruel joke.
“Tabernac,” says Luc.
4.
Now, perhaps, we notice Luc Drapeau. You or I might give him a second glance: he’s one of us—just a regular guy—in some kind of a situation. He’s got a nice suit but he’s sitting on the curb with his head in his hands, sweat glistening on the back of his neck.
But I’ve got places to be and so do you, so we move along. This is New York. Who lolligags for a hard luck case? Just angels and predators.
Luc’s borrowed tram card no longer works, and he’s forgotten his parasol in Philip’s office. It’s a long, hot walk uptown and Luc has paused to give his tired dogs a moment to breathe. The air smells like armpits and yeast, punctuated by crackles of ozone from a nearby row of wallahs’ carts. “Hot dog! Newsfeed! Recharge!”
He licks his lips. He’s spent his last coins on water but he’s thirsty again.
When he closes his eyes he sees Philip’s hapless shrug as the police bag his head. The inside of Luc’s nose still smells like cigar smoke. He opens his eyes again: what is he going to tell Celise?
On the far side of the Eighth Avenue Canal is a plaza of bikes, crisscrossed by the sharp noon shadows of the walkways above. Over the shuffle and shout and splash of city bustle Luc can just barely detect the noise of the riders’ overlapping efforts, pedals spinning in rough-edged social synchronicity giving rise to a unified low hum—a hum so familiar that it’s often hard to hear, even up close.
But Luc can hear it. He can feel it.
He finds himself crossing the canal over West Fiftieth Span then winding his way back to the bikes. It’s a busy day. He saunters along the plaza’s periphery, his jacket at his shoulder, hunting for a free mount.
He whistles Poulenc: Trois mouvements perpétuels.
Luc Drapeau doesn’t hang his head in resignation. He blinks in anticipation, eager for relief. He knows in the ride he will find solace. At least for an hour his purpose will be clear, and his reward tangible. His heart beats faster. He flexes his palms.
A bike comes free.
Luc lingers, stretching out his calves. He glances up to check if anyone else is heading for the bike. Instead he sees another bike vacant, this one cleared by an old woman in a burqa who gasps for breath as she snatches up her coins from the box. He passes her as he strides to his mount and settles in.
He rolls up his sleeves. He hangs his jacket over the seat and ties his tie around his brow to catch the sweat.
After testing the pedals gingerly he closes his eyes for a moment, his lips twitching in communion with the trinity. He pushes the pedals through a full cycle, feeling out the machine’s character, lets go then catches the pedals again playfully, sends them falling into the round and taps them onward...
Luc rides. The world falls away.
He enters a private dimension where time is flexible, space is irrelevant, and pain is numbed. Luc wouldn’t tell you anything more specific than that, so neither will I. It’s the dignity of dreams.
The snap back to reality is rude in the best of cases. In this case it is especially rude because someone has bodily rammed Luc off his ride and sent him sprawling to the pavement to strike his head on the next bike in line. He gasps, ducking to avoid the rider’s flying pedals, scuttles sideways to stay clear. “Tabernac!”
Two hard brown boys with narrow eyes stand over Luc, their boots on his mount. The people around them keep their heads down and ride on. The boys wear matching crimson sweatbands around their foreheads and wrists; black tanks and biking shorts; leather gloves and tattoos. They sneer when they’re not chuckling, and they’re chuckling now as they look down at him.
Luc’s muscles are vibrating from interrupted motion, his heart pounding. “Why you did that there?” he asks, getting up on one elbow and breathing hard. “You think that’s funny, the pushing?”
“No,” sneers one of the brown boys. “Do you?”
Luc gets to his feet. “You want to ride this one, kid? Be my guest. I will take only my jacket.”
He reaches for it but finds himself suddenly on the ground again, his forehead pressed into gritty concrete by a knee. The knee pulls away and Luc slowly lifts his face. One of the boys squats down in front of him. “I did not say you could get up,” he chuckles to Luc, then sneers, “And I am not your kid.”
Luc is on his hands and knees. “I don’t have any money,” he says.
“Eat your money,” says the boy. “This is about respect.”
“Respect? How about respect for the elder?”
This earns Luc a backhanded smack across the face. He winces, skin stinging. He casts about to the other riders but their eyes are locked elsewhere. The brown boys are chuckling again. “No, Pepé Le Pew, this is about respect for the powers that be.”
Luc frowns. “Who are the powers that be?”
“Kala Kala, motherfucker,” hisses the boy. “These are Kala Kala’s bikes, and you’re in Kala Kala’s square.”
“I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”
“Yes,” agreed the boy with a chuckle, “you will be sorry.”
Luc is blindsided by a kick to the ribs from the tough guy behind him. The other two advance and let their feet swing, pummeling Luc’s body and limbs with their boots. He tries to roll into a ball and take it quietly until they get bored but they don’t get bored. It goes on and on. They laugh. The kicks become sharper.
“Jésu’!” groans Luc, just someone stomps a heel against the side of his head. “Somebody help me!” he cries, reaching out to the riders around him. They keep their heads bowed. They pedal faster. Luc’s outstretched hand is thrown down and jumped on. “Au secours!” he pleads.
He is kicked in the mouth. He tastes the iron tang of blood.
A moment later he is picked up, his face squeezed between rough hands, the blurry features of the sneering brown boy swimming close. “You suck Kala Kala’s cock,” the boy whispers fiercely. “Say it. Say it!”
“I suck Kala Kala’s cock,” says Luc.
He is dropped. He folds like a pile of laundry onto the pavement, leaning against the back of a bike. Its rider ignores him. Luc spits blood and sees stars. He wipes his mouth with the sweat on his forearm.
He looks up.
The boys are walking away, pulling Luc’s suit jacket back and forth between them as they shred it. “Tabernac, tabernac,” swears Luc, shaking his head. He gets to his knees and then slowly stands. His knees quake.
He spots a dress shoe he didn’t know he’d lost. He picks it up, fondling it absently as he looks around and blinks, dazed.
The bells at St. Patrick’s mark two.
On the way home Luc Drapeau stops at St. James to go into the toilet and clean himself up a bit. He drinks the rust-coloured, lukewarm splatter from the sink. He dabs at two small bloodstains on his collar and succeeds in giving each one a rust-coloured halo.
He opens the door of the boarding house in Brooklyn, climbs the steps, fumbles through the dark hall, passes quietly into the cramped unit. Celise sits on the bed feeding the baby, cradling him in her arms, her gown untied and her milky breasts exposed. Her hair is wet and the room smells like baby soap and talc. She looks up, searching the feeble candlelight to understand Luc’s expression. “You’ve been hit!” she gasps.
“I was mugged,” says Luc.
“Your jacket!”
“I left it at the office.”
“Jésu’, Luc.”
“I know, I know. I’m fine. Don’t worry. Everything’s fine.”
He sits on the bed beside her as the baby ceases to suckle, turning aside and falling quiet. Celise touches Luc’s face tenderly, watches him wince. He drops his eyes to the sleeping baby. When he looks up she’s still watching him. “I was worried,” she says.
“Don’t worry,” he tells her.
“This place is so strange.”
“We’ll find our way,” he promises.
5.
Luc Drapeau shows up for work on Wednesday morning, a winning employment lottery chit clutched in his hand. When he rubs his fingers against the papery plastic he can feel the thin strands of data fibres woven inside. The address winks above a small square of map, guiding him here, to the Sewage Pumping Station at Avenue D and East Thirteenth.
His name is called: “Drapow, Luck!”
In a grimy green change-room he strips off his suit pants and shirt, folds them carefully into a rusty, cubical locker that smells like mildew, then takes a sanitation jumpsuit from the row of hangers. The jumpsuit smells considerably worse than mildew.
He is paired up with a veteran of the job to learn the ropes. Her name is Rosie. They ride down together in a rickety elevator. Rosie also smells considerably worse than mildew. “Wanna chaw?” she asks, offering over a greasy tin of spit tobacco.
“No thank you,” says Luc.
“Suit yaself,” she says breezily, expectorating a string of brown swill on the floor. “But it helps.”
“Helps what?”
The elevator settles with a lurch and the door grinds open, admitting a wall of eye-watering stench. Luc gags reflexively. Rosie chortles. “Told ya,” she says, punching his arm in a friendly way. “That’ll put some hair on ya chest, huh?”
“Jésu’,” croaks Luc.
They pull up their hoods and secure their breathing masques, the air inside rubbery and close, the filters only mildly successful in cutting the stink. They draw on gloves and toggle the lamps on their foreheads, the dim, amber beams illuminating vapours swirling up by the low ceiling.
He follows Rosie’s bobbing light down the tunnel. She raises her masque intermittently to hork into the shadows. “Come on, slowpoke,” she calls, her coarse voice muffled and alien. “Shit don’t wait for no man.”
They descend a ladder to a landing where a gang is at work trawling a river of filth for settled solids or sources of potential blockage. They wade into the mire with nets, hooks and scoops. The quarry seems to come in bursts and now, in a lull, the workers hop up to sit on the edge of the platform, pools of unspeakable mud collecting around their backsides in stringy clods and runny rivulets. “Rosie!” they call. “How the hell are ya?”
“Got a greener,” she grunts, nodding at Luc.
“Hi,” says Luc.
“Strong stomach on you there, bub?” asks a husky fellow as he pushes up his masque to shove a wad of spit tobacco into his mouth.
Luc shrugs. “It’s okay, my stomach.”
The husky fellow snickers. “We’ll see, huh?”
“Aw, leave him alone, Donny,” says Rosie, spitting into the underground river. “It ain’t like he asked to be here.”
“Damn, Rosie,” replies the husky fellow. “Nobody asks to be here. I mean, shit, woman—nobody except you.”
They all guffaw. Donny, the husky fellow, kicks his boots playfully in the rancid water for a moment and then casts his headlamp upstream. Rosie follows his gaze. She squints, her eyes penetrating the dark in a way Luc’s cannot. “There’s a nice piece of incoming right there,” she declares. “Let’s get lively.”
The work is hard, and awful.
When we were kids this is the kind of thing that would’ve been handled automatically with sluice filters, dehydration vats, timed settling tanks and chemical treatments. In the old days some bored fool would sit with his feet up on a desk, watching gauges and reading the newspaper until something beeped. Before the fuel crisis this was the drudgery of robots and untouchables, not men.
The objects of their attention are dumped in various chutes according to composition, the art of diagnosis imparted in dribs and drabs by Rosie as examples present themselves. “Smell that funk? That’s the ammonia. That goes right in the yogurt tank for breakdown. Now that, on the other hand, is a log of good old fashioned human crap. Send that to chute two for bio-reclamation.”
Luc sighs, catching his breath from retching. “The whole island’s waste is sorted like this?”
“Shit no,” replies Donny, scooping up something indescribable and flinging it into the mouth of a chute behind him. “This is just the stuff the boys upstream missed. This, bub, is what you call fucking quality control.”
They take another break as the river runs comparatively clean for a spell. Up topside the day is wearing on and the air coming through the ventilators is getting hotter, the occasional puff of humid breeze carrying smells like perfume, perspiration and charcoal. Luc catches a sweet glimmer of these saner scents as he pushes up his masque to mop the sweat from his face. “It’s hot,” he pants.
“It ain’t nothing no hot now,” warns skinny Miguel, leaning on his hook. “Just you to wait and to see, my friend.”
Luc waits. Luc sees. An hour passes and the air becomes a visible miasma, tendrils churning in the soft cones of their headlamps. It is hard to breathe. Luc’s ventilator has begun to smell like cheese. His arms ache as he hoists his scoop to snag a loop of knotted cabling. He grunts wearily as he flings it to the chute.
Moisture beads on his masque, fogging the glass.
The gang have all unzipped their jumpsuits and peeled them down to the waist, working bare-chested with sweat running off them like rain. They glisten in the dark as they shout lewd jokes to one another, guffawing, swearing, pausing to spurt tobacco juice. They stand in the river like fishers. They know each other well.
Donny stands in front to catch first. He has his back to everyone, a matted carpet wall of flesh. He calls out, “Poker at Lee’s?”
“Shut up,” Lee calls back. “I’m tired of cleaning up after you assholes. You barfed on my fucking couch, Don.”
“Yeah,” giggles Skinny Miguel as he hucks a wad of faeces into the chute. “That was gross, Donny.”