9 comments/ 27125 views/ 3 favorites Keeper of the Streets By: dr_mabeuse The clouds over the lake were low and slate gray and threatening. There would be something cold and wet falling from the sky before the night was over, and Lia reminded herself to keep a careful eye on Peter Bessinger and be sure to leave when he did. She didn't want to be out in the sleet on Michigan Avenue at one in the morning looking for a cab, not in this outfit. The very thought gave her chills, and the thin yet elegant gown she wore didn't help. She finished her lipstick and adjusted her scarf so it hung just right off her shoulders. Mark was right: she did have beautiful shoulders and a lovely neck, and the rhinestone necklace and her upswept hair showed them off wonderfully. The gown was perfect too: a smooth expanse of burgundy satin that followed the curves of her body so closely the smooth rolls of her abs were subtly visible. Not a trace of fat on her. And not a stitch on underneath either. The points of her nipples were just visible, and she liked them that way: sharp little points, weapons of battle in her unceasing war for supremacy. Whoever that bitch was, the one trying to make time with Peter B., she'd soon find out that Lia Callison had brains to go with this beauty, and claws too. "Too much wine! Too much wine!" Candy Moser pushed into the lady's room, fanning herself with her hand. In Lia's view, Candy's weight precluded her from the immediate competition and so they were friends, or at least as close as Lia as Lia ever got. "God, is this a view?" Candy asked, going over to the large windows overlooking the lake. "If this is the view from the lady's room, can you imagine what the condos must be like?" "To die for," Lia said. "Jason's on the 33rd floor. Jason Grippman? His place looks west, of course, over the city itself. That's really the best view. Looking east you only get to see the water." "But those clouds!" "Mmm." Lia ran her gloss over her lips. "Yes, I suppose they're nice. If you're a meteorologist." Lia dropped her lipstick into her bag and turned to Candy. "Who's that girl talking to Peter B? The redhead. Green dress? Boob job?" Candy came over to the sink and ran her hands under the electric faucet. She wet her hands in the sharp spray and patted her face. "I think that's Claudia something. Something Irish. O'whosis or something. She's on the speaker committee. A junior partner at Ferris. She'll be working with Peter when he goes over there. You know he's already tendered his resignation at Denton-Langer." "Of course I know. Senior partner and all that. Taking his city contracts with him, too." Candy looked at Lia with a spectator's admiration for a pro at work. "And did you hear about the bonus they're giving him? Pretty much just buying him away from Denton. He's rolling in it now. Probably the highest paid architect in the city for not being a full partner." "Project facilitator, Candy," Lia corrected. "And don't be gauche. What's his interest in her?" Candy pulled down some paper towels and patted her face dry. "Darling, I have no idea. But you know Peter's involved with Polly. He's taken." Candy stopped drying her face as the thought hit her. She looked up. "Lia, you wouldn't!" Lia smiled and shook her head. "Darling, I'm in PR, remember? I'm always looking for new clients. I'm networking. That's all. Just spreading sunshine and good cheer wherever I go." Sunshine and good cheer weren't what Candy thought of when she connected the word "spreading" with Lia, but she had the good sense to hold her tongue. "And maybe a little good cheer will get you some of the PR for the block seventeen project." Lia shrugged. "They already have our proposal. But a little lobbying never hurts." Candy gave a short laugh. "As long as it stays in the lobby." A sudden squall of wind struck the big windows with a muffled boom, followed by the sizzling sound of frozen sleet blasting against the glass. "Oh God!" Candy said. "Here it comes. We're really in for it now!" ~ ~ ~ Despite her plans, at one o'clock in the morning, Lia Callison was indeed huddled inside the lobby of the Adirondack building, looking out onto Wabash Avenue beneath the El tracks and waiting for her cab. Her plan to follow Peter Bessinger out when he left and innocently ask him for a ride fell through when she missed the elevator, and by the time she got down to the parking garage he was gone. Too embarrassed to go back up to the dinner, she called for a cab on her cell and now waited. Sleet and snow blew by outside in nearly horizontal streaks, and the wind moaning through the revolving door was strong enough to set it spinning in slow, ghostly circles. Right outside the door, a mesh trashcan had been overturned and garbage spilled out onto the sidewalk. A plastic bag the size of a football sat forlornly in the wind, it's corners flapping and contents spilling out in a most disconcerting manner. For some time now, Lia had been staring across the street at a figure huddled in a doorway, so rigid and still it had taken her a long time to decide whether it was really a person or not. It was only when she saw one arm reach out of the shadows to pull a battered shopping cart closer that she realized it was a homeless person: a man, from the size of him, big, and shapeless as a gravestone. She paid him no attention until the thought occurred to her that, although she could barely see him, he could clearly see her standing in the lighted lobby. From that point on she couldn't keep her eyes from him, glancing nervously across the snow-swept street and trying to figure out what he was doing there, why he didn't move. She wasn't exactly afraid. She'd lived in this city for the last nine years and had never once been robbed or broken into or even threatened. It was more that she didn't want to have to think about him: about where he'd go on a night like this and where he'd sleep. There were shelters for people like him, weren't there? She knew, because her company had handled some of the flyer work for the city-run shelters on a pro bono basis. There were shelters that provided them with a hot meal and a place to sleep or something, and all you had to do was show up. No doubt he'd go to one once the wind let up a little, and if he didn't, well, that was his concern and none of her business. But still he didn't move, and she was quite sure now she could feel his eyes on her. She wasn't frightened, she wasn't worried, but looking across the wind-whipped street was like looking into another world. She felt bare and conspicuous, and she couldn't shake the nagging feeling that he wanted something from her, something more than a handout.. Wabash Avenue is the eastern boundary of the Loop. The elevated tracks run right overhead and provide some shelter from the snow and the seeking wind off the lake. But on this night, the tall buildings served only to channel the winds right down its length, setting up a howling gale on the frozen sidewalk. The snow and sleet went flying horizontally down the artificial canyon. It was a night that could only be described as cruel. There was no traffic to speak of. It was a Tuesday night and well past business hours, and the Loop was deserted. When Lia finally saw the familiar yellow taxi nose in at the curb and sound its horn she sighed with relief and headed towards the door, her heels clicking loudly on the marble floor. The man made his move at the same time, stepping from his shelter and crossing the street purposely towards her, his hands stuffed grimly into his pockets. "Oh Great!" she thought as she leaned her weight against the revolving door. The bum had timed his move perfectly, coming to meet her just as she'd be getting into her cab. The door hardly moved. She opened her purse and looked for some small bills, pressing her back against the heavy revolving door and finally getting it moving. As soon as she hit the street the wind took her coat and her scarf in its teeth and yanked at her and the sleet cut her like knives, knocking the breath from her body and bringing tears to her eyes. With her head bowed she had time to notice that the plastic bag from the trashcan was a bag of frozen French fries, and there was a strange, burnt, fist-sized hole in the middle and the fries were spilling out, mashed and mangled. It struck her briefly as an odd thing to find in a public trashcan, and then she turned her back to the wind and rummaged in her purse looking for something to give the man as a handout. There would be no avoiding him now. He was just stepping onto the curb as Lia found her wallet and snapped it open. She could just see the man through her watery eyes and see the mound of overcoats he wore, the long scraggly beard, the stocking cap full of holes. "Don't take that cab," he said. Lia paid no attention. She found two dollars in her purse and held them out towards him as if they were a shield. The wind bent them back around her fist. "Don't get in that cab," he said again. "It ain't safe." The cab driver slid over and opened the back passenger door and looked at her expectantly. He was wearing shirt sleeves, and she could feel, even smell the taxicab's warmth coming out from the back seat. "Don't get in that cab, lady! I'm warning you!" He reached out, ignored the money she offered and grabbed her arm. "Are you crazy? Let go of me!" The bum had taken a grip on her coat and began tugging, pulling her down the street. He was surprisingly strong and she was stumbling trying to keep up, but Lia was stubborn and she dug her heels into the icy sidewalk and pulled free of his grasp. Down at the end of the block, not fifty feet beyond the cab, a big city salt truck turned onto Wabash, going unusually fast for such a bad night. Its yellow warning light flashed and salt sprayed from the back hopper as he fishtailed dangerously onto the avenue. The bum took her coat again and she couldn't make him let go. He kept pulling her away from the cab. "Let go of me you crazy son of a bitch!" Lia jerked to get free and looked to the cabbie for help. There was a deep rumble and a shower of sparks as an El train squealed by overhead, a metallic thunder that shook the ground. Through her tear-dimmed eyes, Lia looked back past the cab and saw the salt truck skidding out of control, sliding through the intersection and shuddering as the driver pumped the hydraulic brakes and frantically spun the wheel. The big tires locked and the whole huge thing started sliding down the street at a sickening angle, its yellow caution light still slapping her in the face like a countdown timer or the strobing light of a stop-action movie. She clearly saw the cab driver's face as he looked in his rearview mirror, the spray of salt bouncing off the car hoods, and then the side of the heavy truck slid into the taxi, lifted the back end up and pushed the cab into the huge SUV parked in front. Car alarms wailed and lights started to flash, and the front of the cab wedged under the SUV and raised it up in a weirdly sexual way. Lia saw every detail as the cab collapsed on itself like an aluminum can, like a slow motion study of a crash-dummy test, the hood popping up, the windshield shattering, the fenders springing like accordions, the sheet metal collapsing with a pitiful, horrifying sound. The radiator ruptured and sent a jet of steam into the frozen air as if in manic celebration. "Come on, come on," the bum yelled above the wind. "You've got to get out of here! Come on!" He yanked her stumbling across the slippery street even as she heard the residual pop and clank of falling metal and the hoarse sound of an avalanche of rock salt spilling from the side of the ruptured truck and burying the cab. Then there was just the sound of the SUV's violated alarm and the vicious howl of the wind through the El tracks. "Oh God! Oh God! Oh my God!" she wailed. "There's nothing you can do. Nothing! Now come on!" He pulled her along and Lia stumbled after him, her new heels slipping on the hard ice and packed snow. All she could think about was that the cab driver was dead, maybe the truck driver too, and had she been in that cab she'd also be dead, with blood all over her beautiful dress and her new shoes. He dragged her around the corner where the wind was still strong but less brutal, and down a concrete stairway. She thought it was the subway, but no: it descended down to Lower Wacker drive, the dark subterranean roadway running beneath the Loop, used for deliveries and freight traffic: a haven for the homeless and anyone looking for some sort of shelter. "Stop! Where are you taking me? What the fuck is this?" "I saved your fucking life, that's what this is. You owe me." Now that she was out of the howling wind and driving sleet, Lia was able to think better, and she was alarmed. "Do you want money? Is that it? I can give you what I have." She opened her purse and rummaged for her cash. He turned his face to her and Lia had a good look at him for the first time. It was the typical homeless face-- the wide cheeks, cold-reddened nose, coarse skin – but the eyes were gray and clear and surprisingly deep. "Don't you know what happened?" he asked accusingly. "Weren't you just up on the street with me?" A gust of wind howled down the staircase and Lia stood there as the snow swirled around them. She was suddenly cold and realized how inadequate her outfit was. He didn't seem cold at all. The layers of coats he wore must be three inches thick. "How did you know?" she asked him. "Why did you tell me not to get into that cab?" He turned and walked down a few steps. "How badly do you want to know?" Lia hesitated. It was dark down here and dirty. It wasn't her world. He stopped and looked back at her. "Well? Are you coming?" The man was insane, maybe even dangerous. Lia took a step back towards the stairs. "Look," she said, trying to sound reasonable. "You saved my life. Maybe I can help you. I know a lot of people. You need money? A job or something?" He stood looking at her until she grew uneasy. She peered into the darkness of lower Wacker and made a face. "Do you live down here?" "I live all over," he said. "And no, you can't help me. Not that way. You don't have anything I want." They were at the foot of the stairs now, and Lia looked around. To either side, concrete loading docks lit by garish yellow sodium vapor lights stretched away as far as she could see, bathing everything in a flickery, unearthly glow. She could look down this side of Wacker but the view across was blocked by a forest of massive columns holding up the roadway above their heads. There were lane markers and sawhorses with blinking warning lights all over, a maze of traffic signals with not a car in sight. The place smelled of diesel fumes and wet concrete. It was dirty, cold, and forbidding. She noticed some movement in the shadows on the cold concrete walls. It might have been a trick of her eyes or the lights because when she looked directly at them they stopped, only to reappear again at the periphery of her vision. Lia felt a jolt of nauseating fear. "Oh my God! Are those rats? Those are rats!" There was hysteria in her voice. "There's rats down here! Those are rats, aren't they?" She ran up the stairs and stopped on the concrete landing, her heart pounding. He walked back and looked up at her quizzically. "Some of them maybe are," he said calmly. "Some of them's something else." "I'm getting out of here! I'm getting out of here right now, goddamnit!" "Wait," he said. He said it with such calm authority that Lia froze in her tracks, one foot poised in the next stair. It didn't even sound like the same voice. She was too startled to move. "Ain't none of them gonna hurt you," he said in his bum's voice again, more gently now. "They's our eyes and ears down here. Don't you know that? Can't you see them?" Lia turned on him in exasperated fury. Her fear made her angry. "What the fuck are you talking about? Huh? I don't know you! Who the hell are you?" He was staring at her. She could see his eyes in the strange light of lower Wacker, and they seemed inhumanly bright and deep. He seemed to be looking through her in a way that made her want to shiver, and not from cold. "No," he said softly. "Who are you? That's the question, Lia. What are you to them?" Lia stood immobilized by his eyes. For a long moment her mind just refused to work, and then she felt something strange, like a dry tongue on the back of her neck. The hairs on the backs of her arms stood up and she felt her knees quiver. Then the man seemed to turn his eyes off. It was as if he threw a switch, and Lia could almost see the glow fade as he turned away. He shrugged his coats up around him and began to walk off into the darkness. Lia's breath exploded from her chest in a shuddering gasp, and by the time she was able to gather her wits he was already moving into the shadows, so swaddled in coats that she couldn't even see his feet. He seemed to be floating back into the general griminess, the dirty gray of his coat merging with the color of the concrete and shadows. She was stunned, her mind strangely blank. She realized she was looking down at her shoes, and the sight of them planted on the grimy stair horrified her. She ran up the icy stairs, bracing herself for the wind as she emerged from the shelter of underground stairway. She welcomed the bite of the wind. It shocked her back into herself and cleared her mind, and as her mind cleared she realized: he'd called her by name. She refused to let herself think about it. She walked east, away from the accident and the stairway, all the while listening for sirens and hearing none. The entire Loop was deserted, a ghost town of wind and driven snow. She huddled in a doorway and called Candy on her cell to come pick her up. Candy was reluctant to leave the party, but there was no way Lia was taking another cab, ever, and the wild fear in her voice frightened her friend. Coming out of the parking garage on Monroe, Candy had no idea of what had happened, and Lia told her nothing, only that she'd been unable to get a cab and was stranded on the street and freezing. At home in her condo she locked the doors and turned on all the lights and then, as if the cold had frozen her emotions, as she warmed up it all seemed to hit her. She couldn't stop shaking She made herself strip off her clothes and shower, turning the water up as hot as she could stand it, and she stood under the spray till her skin felt raw and parboiled. By the time she got out she was in control of herself again. She put on her terry robe and wrapped a towel around her head, poured some wine and went into her living room. He had called her "Lady": that must be it. In her state of upset she had mis-heard. It happened all the time with her name which sounded like so many words. As to the other things he had said, well, the man was clearly insane. After all, most homeless people had something wrong with them anyhow: why else would they be homeless? The wind rattled her windows and the snow was thick, but down below, eight flights down in the relative calm of the lee side of her building, she thought she saw a shape standing in a doorway. It was hard to be sure in the dark and the blowing snow, but slowly the conviction grew. It wasn't what she saw, it was a feeling she had inside, something about the way he stood, a kind of weight she could feel from. She told herself it was silly, all homeless men looked alike -- walking piles of rags – but there was no fooling herself. It was him. By the time she finished her wine, there was no doubt in her mind. She didn't know how he'd managed to find her building or how he'd gotten there so quickly, but she was frightened now, and she wished there was someone she could call. She took an Ambien and poured more wine. She watched TV until she found the remote slipping from her fingers. When next she looked out the window, he was gone. She stumbled into the bedroom and fell asleep. Keeper of the Streets The next morning was gray and blustery, with plumes of snow blowing off the roofs of buildings and the streets black with ice. The first thing she did was go to the window and look for him, but the doorway was empty. Later however, after she'd showered and dressed and was pulling the Lexus onto the street from her garage, he was back, and there was no doubt this time. He stood there in the doorway by the same ragged shopping cart, neither looking at her or away from her, seemingly a part of the street. She wasn't frightened any more. Lia didn't frighten easily, and now that she'd calmed down and it was daytime, she felt something more akin to curiosity. The cabby's death hung in the back of her mind like a stubborn nightmare, tingeing everything with a feel of foreboding. She knew that the man in the street was the key to understanding what had happened, yet she couldn't see how she could possibly approach him now. The whole episode seemed like a dream. She was distracted at work and not herself. She took lunch in her office and watched the local news on her office TV. Everything was about the storm: power outages, highway disasters. The death of the cabbie was mentioned and there was footage of the smashed cab lying amidst the torrent of salt, surrounded by the flashing lights of the rescue vehicles. Lia sat with her spoon of yogurt posed by her lips and felt a wave of nausea engulf her as she watched the steaming breath of the reporter standing in front of the wreck. A terrible wave of fear at the ugliness and brutality of death made her turn from the TV and stare at the gray blankness outside her window. Fear climbed up her spine and raised the hairs on the back of her neck. She threw herself into her work. She made calls, she met with her aids. She refused to let herself think about it, but it wouldn't go away. By the time she left it was dark, and by then her fear had been replaced by a stubborn need to find the homeless man and find out what he knew. She didn't have far to look. When she came to the building across the street from her apartment, there he was, standing in the doorway where she'd seen him last night. She pulled up to the curb and opened the power window on the passenger side and leaned over. But there must be some mistake. The man who stepped out of the shadows was a business man in a black wool coat with a trim mustache and salt-and-pepper hair. She stared at him through the open window and he stared back and smiled. In that instant she knew in the pit of her stomach there was no mistake. It was the same man, the same eyes. She could see that he recognized her too. She fought down a surge of sudden panic. "What is this?" "May I get in? I'm not dressed for this weather. Not like last night." "Who are you?" He reached a gloved hand inside the window, unlocked the passenger door and got in. The leather seat sighed under his weight. "Who the fuck are you?" Lia was confused, but she wasn't quite afraid. He strapped the seat belt across his chest and gestured with his head as a car behind her sounded its horn. "I suggest you drive. I'll tell you everything as we go." Lia pulled her eyes from his face as the car behind her honked again. She focused her eyes on the street and pulled away from the curb, her hands rigid on the wheel. "My name's Bosun," he said, closing the window. "And yes, I'm the man who saved your life last night." "What? Were you slumming or something? Where's your shopping cart?" He smiled, showing even, white teeth. "It's safe. Waiting for me when I get back. You work at Benrus, right? Benrus and Steele, the PR company that handles things for Ferris?" Lia glanced at him sharply. "Who told you that? How did you know my name last night? Just who the fuck are you?" "Turn here," he said. "I want to go down to the Loop. I want to show you something." "No. I'm not going anywhere. Not until you answer my questions." She wanted to pull over, but the curbs were lined with cars and traffic was thick. There was no choice but to keep driving. "Okay. Who am I? I'm what you call a homeless person. A bum. I'm one of those people you never notice. That's okay, though. We like it that way." "Look at the way you're dressed. You don't look homeless to me." "I can make myself look like whatever I want. I'm not what you think." Lia looked at him derisively and opened her mouth to say something when she saw his form suddenly blur and become featureless and indistinct, and the next second the businessman was gone and she was looking at the scraggly bum from the streets. She gasped and bit her tongue in fright, instinctively slammed on the brakes and jerked the wheel to the left, almost hitting a parked car. Horns behind her blared She looked at him again but now the businessman was back, looking over his shoulder with mild annoyance at the traffic commotion they'd caused. Lia stared at him in astonishment. There was no doubt what she'd seen: his coat had gone from coal black to dirty ash-gray; his hair had grown long and colorless and the very smell of him had changed. The scent still hung in the air, a smell of cold concrete and ashes. "Jesus Christ! What the fuck was that? What did you just do?" "Drive, Lia," he said calmly. "The Loop." Lia clenched her jaw tight against her rising panic and stared straight ahead, hands in a death grip on the wheel. It must have been a trick of the light. Maybe hypnosis. Maybe there was something wrong with her "What are you?" she asked nervously. "Some sort of magic show or something? What the hell was that?" "Listen to me Lia," he said deliberately. "I'm going to tell you who I am, and then you're going to tell me who you are, because you're not what you seem either, are you? You look like a sane and intelligent woman who lives in a sane and intelligent world, but things aren't always what they seem, are they?" She tried not to look at him, terrified he was going to change into something else. Her fright made her nauseous. "I don't know what you're talking about." He turned so he was facing front and he calmly patted his tie in place. "I'll tell you this once, because I've learned through experience that once is either enough or it's entirely too much, so take it as you will. I'm one of the keepers." He stared at her sharply, and again Lia had that feeling of his seeing through her, of seeing into her skin. He looked away with a slightly puzzled expression that made her feel she had failed some test. She felt slightly indignant. "Keepers? What keepers?" "This city is alive. Literally. It's like a living organism, growing, feeling, changing, falling ill and getting better. All these people, all these cars and buildings and stop lights and all the stuff that comes in and goes out, they're like the cells and organs in its body. The city is greater than the sum of its parts, just like a living organism, and all these people and things are running about and living their lives totally unaware of what their function is or that they're part of something bigger than themselves, but they are. And so are you and so am I. But there's one difference: I'm aware of it. I'm one of the few who knows." Lia stole a glance at him, afraid to look at him directly. They were driving under streetlights now and squares of light were passing over his face as he spoke, making him vanish into shadow and then reappear. His eyes were calm and he looked entirely reasonable, and his bland normality only made Lia's rising panic worse. "We keepers are like the white blood cells in the body of the city. We hunt through the streets and alleys looking for sickness and signs of infection. We know the signs and we do what we can. We keep our finger on the city's pulse and know when it's healthy and when it's sick. We know all sorts of things. It's our life. It's what we do." "What did you do just now. How did you do that?" He sat back with a sigh, unsure whether she'd heard anything he'd just said. "I told you. I can be whatever I want. I'm not what you would exactly call human, Lia. I find it convenient to appear to others as a homeless person. Many of us do. We go where we want, nobody sees us, and nobody pays any attention to what we do. All homeless people are crazy. Everyone knows that, right?" Lia had to look at him. She couldn't help it. She was terrified he was going to turn into something else and she didn't want to be caught by surprise. "Are you an alien or something? Is that what you mean?" He smiled indulgently and shook his head. "Well, where do you come from? Where do you live? What do you want with me?" "It's not important where I come from, and anyway I don't really know. I've always been like this, and as far as I can tell we seem to just grow, produced by the city when it needs us. Wherever there's a vacant lot, an old alley, an abandoned factory, we seem to sprout up. It's really something to see. I found a keeper once growing in the corner of an empty warehouse, right under a pile of old newspapers. Funny how that happens. "As to where I live, I live all over. It doesn't matter. I might have a penthouse apartment, or I can live in a box under the expressway. Like a white blood cell, I go where I'm needed." Lia laughed. It wasn't a good laugh. "You're crazy, you know that? I think you're fucking out of your mind!" "Fair enough," he said, turning in his seat to face forward. "That's fine with me. In fact, it's better that way. Now, I've told you who I am. You tell me who you are." "You already know who I am, remember? You called me by name last night, so you must have been talking to someone. Who is it? Candy Mosher?" Again his eyes searched into her, and this time Lia had had enough. "Damn it! Stop looking at me like that. I don't like it!" "This is very strange," he said. "You really don't know anything, do you?" The question wasn't rhetorical, and as he waited for her answer, Lia felt the goose bumps start on the backs of her arms again. "No." There was a hint of despair in her voice. "I don't. I really don't." They drove in silence for half a block, and then nodded with his head. "Turn left at the corner." Lia made a left onto Adams street. They were back in the Loop now, the streets crowded with people going home in the evening rush, bundled against the cold and walking cautiously around the patches of ice on the sidewalks. "You know what this is?" he asked. They were driving past a big new construction site in the heart of downtown, a vast empty plot lined now with plywood construction barrier and pedestrian walkways. "I ought to. That's block seventeen. Ferris and Kaminsky's putting up Synergy Tower there. Why? What do you care?" "Tell me about it. Tell me what you know." She shrugged. "Big project, multi-use. Offices and condos. Thirty-three stories, mall, multiplex. It's going to be their flagship building, the anchor for the New Downtown. We're doing their PR, and in fact they're supposed to break ground on Friday." "That's it? That's all you know?" She laughed bitterly. "Why? Lower Wacker's not good enough for you now? You in the market for a condo?" He ignored her sarcasm. "It's not good. They're upsetting things. There's something very wrong here." They came to a red light and Lia looked at him. "That's one hell of a piece of real estate. People have been after it for years: prime location, right downtown. It was all tied up in zoning for ever and Ferris had to grease a lot of palms and pull a lot of strings to get the permits. Now it's theirs and they're building on it. What's the big deal?" He looked at her and in the dark of the car his eyes were calm and clear and level. If he was crazy, he was the sanest looking lunatic she'd ever seen. There was great sadness in his eyes too, and despite her unease, Lia felt for him, for whatever private devils he was struggling with. "It's all the layering," he said. "The thickness. You get all these people and their thoughts and plans and emotions. They all crowd together till all the meanings and feelings get all tangled up, so tangled up they takes on a life of its own. That's what makes the city live, these densities of emotion, these layers. Like an emotional compost heap, and then something grows from it. Do you understand?" Whatever response he was hoping for from her, he didn't get it. "There's something very evil out there," he said. "Our people are being killed. The keepers are disappearing, and there are holes in the worlds. It has to do with that building. If you know how to read the signs, they all point to that building." "You were almost killed last night too," he said. "That's what puzzles me. They were coming for you too, and I don't understand why." Lia felt a chill. "Me? Why me? Who's coming for me?" "The signs were there," he said. "That's how I knew. That cab was doomed." "What signs? And who are you talking about?" She felt Bosun's eyes on her and turned to him. He smiled as if to reassure her. "Nothing human, if that's what you're worried about." Lia saw the red light at the last moment and jammed on the brakes. Pedestrians jumped out of the way, one man bundled up so tightly she couldn't even see his eyes smacked an angry mitten down on the hood of her car and yelled some hopelessly muffed expletives at her. She looked at the crowds of people waddling past. They looked like mummies wrapped up against the cold: faceless, featureless. Bosun sighed and sat back in his seat. "It's very strange. It's like nothing we've ever seen before. We don't know who it is or even what. And now there are signs that tell me you're involved, but I can see now you're not. It's very strange." Bosun folded his hands in his lap and closed his eyes and seemed to be lost in meditation. The light changed and Lia pulled away, following traffic, leaving block seventeen behind. She glanced in her rearview and looked at it again, a great, gaping empty spot on State Street in the heart of the Loop. It had lain vacant for over a decade as developers and politicians fought over it, made deals and sold each other out. Great gobs of state money had flowed into that empty space, commissions had been formed and dissolved, more money spent. Even the Feds had gotten involved at one point , and still not one spadeful of earth had ever been lifted. He was right about one thing, if ever a piece of ground was thick with human feeling - plans and dreams, greed and power and betrayal - that would be it. Now, though, as it faded from sight in her mirror, there was nothing to see but the faceless façade of plywood fencing already sporting some crude graffiti, and a couple of construction trailers at the edge of the lot. The heavy equipment hadn't arrived yet and there was really nothing to see. Bosun didn't even look back at it. "Turn here," he said, pointing to a ramp that led downwards. "I want you to see this." "Lower Wacker?" she asked spinning the wheel. "Not again?" He ignored her. "I don't know why you were pointed out to me and I don't know what this means, but I have to show you something. It might be important." "You don't know this," Bosun went on. "But consciousness flickers. The world you see isn't continuous, but more like frames in a movie clicking by very fast. What most people don't know is that there are other movies hidden between those frames too, whole different versions of reality. That's where I live and where me and my friends do our business, between those frames. I can make you see it. It's not hard, and I want you to know." The car rolled down the ramp, leaving the lights of the city behind and entering the stygian gloom of the street below the streets. The old sodium vapor lights down here gave everything a greenish cast, making the concrete pilings and loading docks look eerily watery and submarine. "Ready?" he asked. He reached out and touched the back of her neck, and Lia felt a little jolt, a little electric shock, and then she gasped as a whole new world unfolded before her. For as far as she could see, the sides of the roadway were lined with office cubicles with people working at them, a veritable hive of activity, stretching out as far as she could see. Her eyes widened in panic. "What the hell is this? What is all this? I've never seen this before." "Pull over. Anywhere. Just nose in over there. You're seeing between the frames now, Lia. This is my world, or one of them." She pulled over to the side of the road and they got out. She automatically reached for the clicker to lock her doors, then realized that would be silly. There was no doubt now that she was in another world. Bosun came around and took her arm and walked her over to the nearest cube. A man sat at a desk while another man and a woman leaned over his chair and studied some papers with him. There were piles of paper all over. The people, the furniture, the walls of the cubicles all seemed slightly hazy and indistinct. Lia realized that they were semi-transparent too. She could see the curb through the desk. "Who are these people? Can they see us?" "Oh sure, but they're busy. This is what we call a ghost office. These are people who used to work in the city. They're dead now or they've lost their jobs – it's all the same to them - but they still want to work. It's all they know, so they come here. It's something we provide for them. Kind of a service. They're comfortable here." Bosun slid a piece of paper off a pile on the desk and looked at it, then showed it to Lia. It was old and yellowed and had been glued to another piece of paper to keep it from falling apart. It looked like it might be an ancient papyrus, but all it was a carbon copy of a handwritten bill of lading for engine parts for 1978 Ford Mustangs. Lia looked up at Bosun in confusion. "I know," he said. "It's meaningless work. They just copy out all these old receipts and ledgers and memos. That's all they do, but it's what they're comfortable doing and they like it. There are ghost offices like this all over the city. There's a special prestige to working downtown, though. This is the big time. But that's not what I wanted to show you. Come over here." He led her through a maze of cubicles and hallways, amidst the clatter of typewriters and telephones ringing, all so strange and out of place with the street above their heads and the asphalt below them. He brought her up short on the edge of what looked like a battlefield or the scene of a meteor strike. The cubicles were crushed and trampled, their neat order reduced to chaos, and garbage and trash were strewn about. A cloud of greasy, acrid smoke drifted from the center of the wreckage where flames flickered dully amidst the shattered desks and overturned chairs and bags of refuse. The scene was desolate, but what was even more horrifying was the way the ghost workers ignored it all, walking around with their meaningless papers in their hands and answering their ringing phones. There was a feeling of palpable evil arising out of this place, and Lia instinctively put her hand over her stomach to quell a feeling of visceral alarm. She was still holding the useless bill of lading. "What is this?" she asked. "What happened here?" "We don't know." Bosun said. "It's a hole in the world. We're seeing holes like this all over. We don't know why. We don't know what's happening." He turned to go and suddenly caught sight of something on the street that made him grab Lia's arm and pull her back. She followed his gaze and saw a pile of spilled trash, as if a garbage can had been overturned. At the head of the pile was a bag of frozen green peas, a fist-sized hole punched in the middle, burnt around the edges, a mess of smashed green peas leaking out. "What? What's wrong?" she asked him. Keeper of the Streets "That's the sign. The killer. Another one's going to die. That's always his sign." "A bag of frozen peas? What are you talking about?" Bosun walked cautiously towards the bag and stared at it. It was just a bag of frozen peas, but something hot had smashed a perfectly round hole in the center and smeared the crushed and charred contents all over the street. It was somehow pitiful and faintly nauseating. Bosun's eyes went over the rest of the pile of garbage, then he stepped back. He took her arm and began to lead her away. "There are signs, Lia. Everywhere there are signs if you know how to look for them. That's what we do. We study signs. We put our hands against the street and feel the life of the city and we study the signs. The garbage, the discards, a pair of shoes hanging from a street lamp, a child's toy purse in the middle of the street, even the power lines over your head. Do you ever look up and study the power lines, Lia? Do you know they change from day to day?" She looked at him incredulously as he hustled her back to her car. "Do you remember what was in the street last night when I saved you from that salt truck? A bag of frozen potatoes with a hole punched out of the center. That's how I knew someone was going to die." "But why me? I don't know anything about all this." Lia stopped in the middle of the street and looked at the absurdity of the busy office in the street. Transparent workers rushed around in a ghostly parody of business, some walking right through her as if she weren't even there. She suddenly realized that to them, she was the ghost, she was the one who wasn't real, and she was seized by a rising panic, a certain knowledge that she didn't know what was real anymore, only that something might be trying to kill her. "I've never seen this place before in my life!" She was frantic now, trying to explain to him. "Block seventeen: that's just a project we're doing PR for! That's all, just another project! I don't know anything about all this." She was bewildered and frightened, and she felt tears gathering in her eyes. She hated crying: she detested it. She looked at the bill of lading in her hand it as if it might have some explanation, but it was as meaningless as everything else, and she furiously crumpled it up and threw it away. She approached Bosun beseechingly. "What the hell are you doing to me? Why me? Why are you doing this to me?" He looked at her sympathetically, then opened the car door. "Come on. Lia. It's time you went home. You obviously don't know anything, and I've got work to do. Maybe it was a mistake to even got you involved." "No!" she shouted, grabbing his arm. "No! You're not leaving me! Not now. Not until I know what's going on." Bosun looked at her for a moment, then opened the car door. "Okay. Then let's go. You can drive me. I can get there faster myself, but you can drive me." Lia got behind the wheel and started the car and they took off, driving right through the crowds of ghost workers who dissolved like so much smoke as they passed. Lia tried not to look. She reminded herself that in this world, she was the ghost. As if reading her mind, Bosun said, "It's so hard to tell what's going on sometimes. We all think we understand how we're connected, our relationship to other people and things, but all we see is what's in our own little world, just that little slice. We don't see all the connections in the other worlds, and in the other worlds connections are thick as knots. Things are bound together in ways you can't even begin to imagine." Bosun directed her to an up-ramp that left lower Wacker and brought them up to street level again, but it wasn't the same street they'd left before, and as the car emerged onto street level, Lia cried out as if she'd been struck in the face, her eyes wide with horror and disbelief. She slammed on the brakes and the car screeched to a halt. She was still seeing Bosun's world, and what she saw when they emerged onto the street was a bewildering, overpowering riot of color and activity. The buildings on either side of the street seemed to vibrate and hum and the street itself took on the gleaming, living character of a vein or artery, undulating with life. The night sky above was filled with squares and rectangles of color sliding along invisible lines like thoughts in a brain, and the windows of the building throbbed with changing colors and flashes of light. There were figures in the street and she knew they were people, but they appeared as bobbing smudges of light in the frenzied landscape, some brilliantly lit up, some barely glowing, and everywhere were the skittering shapes that Lia remembered from her first trip underground with Bosun, the things she had thought were rats, but were not rats, she saw now. They scurried along the streets and sidewalks, ran up and down the sides of the buildings like ants on legs that were too fast to follow. It was a cartoon world: a world gone mad. Everything was alive. Everywhere was the frenzied activity of overflowing life, as if every thought of every mind had a life and a shape all its own, and all waving and radiating into the night air in a cacophony of color and movement that simply took her breath away. She could see the signs too now. She could see what was healthy and what was diseased, as if she could feel it with her eyes. She could feel the currents of the people's thoughts and see the inexorable flow of the traffic like blood through a vein. The city was alive. It was humming with life. She was in the bloodstream of a living organism, and she was part of it too. "Damn!" Bosun snapped. "I forgot. It's too much, isn't it? Too much for you? Where's your purse? Get some money! Give me some money!" Lia sat there unable to move, transfixed by the riot of activity before her as Bosun grabbed her pure off the floor and scrabbled inside it looking for her wallet. He pulled out some bills and pressed them against the back of her neck. Lia felt that that same electric jolt at the top of her spine she'd felt before, and then she was suddenly looking at the city she knew again, just west of the Loop, the steady traffic and the flow of pedestrians under the streetlights, but the memory of what she'd seen left her speechless and unable to even think. "What did you do to me? What did you do? Where'd everything go?" "Hold this money," he said, pressing the bills into her hand. "That's what does it. It's one of the best ways to keep you grounded in your world. Take it and hold it tight." Lia grabbed the money in her gloved hand, closing her fist on it, afraid to let it go. Bosun stared at her to make sure the crisis was over, then he sat back in his seat. "The one thing everyone you see out there has in common is that they all carry money with them, all the time. The more money they have, the less they can see the other worlds. The only time they put their money away from them, that's when the dreams start." This time she didn't even bother to ask for an explanation. She only looked at him to see if he were joking, but he was serious. "There's a reason that rich people live so high above the street and the poor people live below it," he said, and smiled. Everything was serious, and everything was a joke, and it bothered her that the wonders he was showing her all seemed on some level ludicrous. She almost wanted to laugh, but she knew it would sound hysterical, and that once she started laughing she might never stop. She looked stupidly at the bills she held tightly in her hand. Bosun reached over and gently pushed her hand down. She hadn't realized she'd been holding the money in front of her face. As if reading her mind he said, "Yes. It's a joke isn't it? It's all a joke. That's the way things are. Frozen vegetables. Thoughts as rats. It's just too funny to believe." "Drive," he said. "Take a right here and a left in the middle of the block." Automatically she stepped on the gas and spun the wheel, steering through the traffic, no longer even paying attention to what she saw, not trusting anything now, no longer even questioning what she saw. "Listen," he said, turning to face her. "I'm sorry for all this, what I put you through. I thought you were involved somehow. Now I see I was wrong, but it's not easy. Just because I see more than you doesn't mean I always know what to make of it, and I'm not sure of anything with this. I have to talk to my people." She pulled into the alley as he'd directed and looked at him. She wasn't surprised to see he had turned back into the bum again, the very same one she'd seen last night: the filthy gray coat, the bulbous nose with enlarged pores. But there was something else too: his eyes had gone dead now, a very convincing hollowness in his bloodshot eyes, as if he really were just some homeless derelict she had picked up and driven around for the last hour or so. She felt dizzy and had the curious feeling things suddenly snapping into focus, as if her ears had suddenly popped and she could hear again, but all over her body. She looked at the bills she held tightly in her hand, as if seeing them for the first time. "Do you know where we are?" he asked her. His voice was rough and ragged, full of whiskey and bad wine. "Block seventeen is right over there. Right through those two buildings near the end of the alley. We're very close. "I'm going now, Lia. I've got to go. You'll just have to do the best you can from now on. I'm really fucking sorry about that, about all this." He opened the door and put his foot out onto the alley, then stopped. He looked back at her with his rheumy eyes. "Probably this never even happened. Know what I mean? Probably I'm just a bum and you've been dreaming. Or maybe you died in that cab last night and this is heaven or something. Or hell. Like in those old Twilight Zone shows. You know them? I used to like them shows. Yeah" He heaved himself out of the car and hawked and spit. She heard it hit the bricks. He turned around one last time. "Thanks for the ride, lady." Lia was beyond words now. She watched him walk down the alley, and as she watched she seemed to see other gray shapes emerge from the very bricks of the surrounding buildings, stepping slowly out of the shadows. She seemed to see them, but she couldn't be sure. She wasn't sure of anything anymore, and she didn't seem to be able to make herself care. He stood together with the other shapeless shadows, unmoving, black against the gray snow, then the darkness seemed to swallow them up and Lia lost sight of them. She sat in the car, her hands still poised on the wheel, and forced herself to be calm. They were gone now. There was no sign of them. Lia turned off the engine and the warning buzzer sounded in her car, telling her the key was still in the ignition. She pulled the key out and the interior lights went on, and Lia sat there in the light of her car until she began to feel vulnerable and exposed. She flicked off the interior lights and sat in the darkness. The feel of her car, the smell of the leather interior, were reassuring to her. She felt safe and isolated. The alley was narrow, hemmed in by two tall buildings on either side. The passageway that led to Block Seventeen was down towards the end, just before the alley dead-ended against a blank brick wall with a big dumpster against it. There was yellow light spilling through the passageway, and Lia stared at the light, looking for Bosun's shadow, which would tell her he was headed to Block Seventeen, but she saw nothing. Wind gusted across the roofs of the buildings above and sent a shower of sparkling snowflakes drifting down into the sheltered stillness of the alley. She sat and waited and listened to the tick of her cooling engine. After a time she opened her door. She remembered what Bosun had said about feeling the streets, and so cautiously, she reached out a gloved hand, leaned out of her car and pressed her palm against the bare, icy cobblestones. Yes, she felt it. The street was humming with some kind of life, as if a current of electricity were going through it. She couldn't believe she'd never noticed it before, but then, how many times had she ever bent down and put her hand against the surface of a street? She got out of the car and the cold struck her immediately. Now that the sun had gone down the air was frigid and a stiff wind had sprung up, making her eyes tear. She leaned against the car and wrapped her arms around herself. He wouldn't be coming back. Something in the way he'd dissolved into the shadows told her that she wouldn't see him again. He'd been mistaken about her. He'd saved her life and given her a warning, opened her eyes briefly to another world and now he was through. Lia looked down at her feet and listened. She heard the wind, the grinding squeal of the El train reflecting off the bricks of the buildings, the muffled honk and roar of the traffic out in the street behind her. The image she'd seen of the city as a living organism was burned into her eyes, and when she looked into the shadows she still saw things moving, dim squares and rectangles of light sweeping over the bricks, as if she'd been staring into a bright light. The telephone wires over her head seemed to sizzle. She began to walk down the alley, watching her step on the ice and keeping a wary eye out now for garbage or anything out of place, for any telltale signs or bags of frozen food, feeling her way along with her heart as well as her eyes and ears. Several times she saw skittering in the shadows, but she wasn't afraid of rats anymore, and she found the motion strangely reassuring. She stepped into the shaft of yellow light that marked the passageway to Block Seventeen. Even though her company handled the PR for the project, Lia had never so much as visited the site or even seen what it looked like. Now, as she emerged from the shadows of a neighboring building, she found herself looking at a great, empty space, something dead in the heart of the city. There were banks of huge, bright, construction lights set around the perimeter, powered by rumbling diesel engines, and the whole site, almost half a city block, was covered with polyethylene tarp several layers thick, weighted down with boards and bricks and pieces of junk. There were a few construction workers at the far side milling about the trailer office, but other than that she was alone. The polyethylene sheets blew and flapped in the wind, the generators hummed. Lia couldn't be sure, but she thought there was some strange movement at the center of the site, something moving beneath the tarp that didn't look like wind. She blinked back her tears from the cold and stared again, but her eyes were caught by a rustle of movement on the periphery, and she turned and looked at the edge of the tarp to her right. There, beyond the glare of the lights, a mass of cable and wires were being slowly, almost imperceptibly dragged under the plastic sheeting: phone lines, electric power cable, armored BX, all slowly slithering under the tarp at barely a snail's pace. It reminded her of nature films she had seen, of a wasp dragging a paralyzed caterpillar into its den, or one snake being swallowed by another. There was something nauseating about it, but she ignored the feeling and forced herself to watch until she was sure she was seeing what she thought and that it wasn't just some trick of the light or the wind. The cables and wires really were being drawn beneath the plastic sheeting. She looked back at the center of the site, then back at the workers, who seemed oblivious to anything beyond the circle of light around their trailer-office. There was no doubt now. There was something moving under the plastic, something small, the size of an infant, rolling around in a most unnatural and almost obscene way, rocking back and forth and shuddering, like something being born. She had a terrible premonition of blood and hunger, of something that smashes and burns and crushes, and then the wind took the corners of the tarp and set them to flapping like whips.