“Come on,” Barney said to Allie Roon. Allie nodded. Or at least Barney thought he nodded: It was hard to tell with all that twitching. Anyway, Allie dutifully followed Barney toward the sidewalk, still dancing as he went, an improbable figure, the old man’s wizened face and the boyish freckles. A lilac bush grew against the fence, the purple clusters so heavy they made the branches droop. Barney hurried past the bush. He saw a trailer truck lumber by on the street, belching blue exhaust. Justice, kind of. He couldn’t smell the lilac, but he couldn’t smell the exhaust, either. And these days he couldn’t smell the odors in the Complex, which got so bad sometimes they took away your appetite.
Allie tripped and Barney helped him regain his balance. They reached the sidewalk, arm in arm, Allie’s bones moving beneath Barney’s fingers. Barney was disappointed to find that the fence continued along the street, unbroken by any entrance.
“Wait here,” Barney said, loosening himself from Allie’s grip. He began to climb the fence, his feet finding support somehow in the small spaces between the slats. The exertion cost him a lot, but he thought, What the hell. The Handyman would be furious if he saw Barney climbing the fence so soon after the last merchandise, but Barney kept climbing, developing a rhythm now, matching his beating heart to the rhythm of his breathing and the movement of his body. He reached the top, straddling the fence, his heart accelerating dangerously and his breath coming fast, but he felt triumphant as he clung there, gathering his strength. Looking down, he saw Allie Roon gazing up at him, a smile on his face, all twitchings gone. The first time he’d seen Allie Roon smile: His face lit up the way a streak of lightning brightens the sky. He realized that Allie Roon hadn’t really wanted to see what was on the other side of the fence. He’d wanted to climb it. Barney felt noble, as if he had completed a mission for Allie.
Barney surveyed the scene before him: the junkyard in all its desperate glory. Acres of junk, a wasteland of abandoned cars and trucks and vans and buses, a metal graveyard. The vehicles were rusted and busted, sagging, some without wheels, as if sunken into the earth, or maybe sprouting from the earth like evil growths. Barney sniffed the air and, despite his inability to smell, could swear the smell of decay and desolation filled his nostrils. He realized this was the rear of the junkyard. No trees grew in the junkyard, no bushes, no shrubs. No one in sight. No living thing anywhere. Barney swiveled his body and looked over his shoulder at the Complex. Despite its shabbiness, it looked respectable compared with the junkyard. But the junkyard had spare parts and the Complex didn’t.
Turning again, Barney spotted the red sports car. The small car drew his attention because it stood upright and complete, its color vivid in contrast to the mottled and ruined cars surrounding it. Yet there was something strange and off-key about it. He squinted against the sun, studying the car—it looked like an MG he had seen once—holding on to the fence as the wind rose again, and the image of the car grew in his mind, not this car down below but the other one: What other one? The one with him inside, out of control on the slanted street, going down down down and fast faster faster, his hands gripping the wheel, knuckles white, foot pumping the brake pedal but nothing happening and the speed gathering, accelerating, the hill slanting steep, steeper, car careening crazily, rampaging now, streetlights flashing on the pavement, pavement wet, engine roaring, whining. The car was filled with his screaming, a scream of horror, loud and high and terrible. His cheeks were taut, stretched, drawn back like the astronauts’ during blastoff. When he spotted the girl at the curb, ready to step into the street, in the path of the car, his scream rose an octave and his eyes leaped in their sockets, threatening crazily to spill out onto his lap. The girl stepped off the curb, not fifty feet ahead, the car hurtling toward her, impossible to stop the car, Jesus, the horn howling now although he wasn’t conscious of blowing it and the girl looking up as the car hurled toward her, her mouth an oval of astonishment, her …
Barney found himself clutching the fence, his legs scissored against the rough wood. His fingers trembled as he loosened his hold. His breath came in terrifying gasps and his heart threatened to explode from his body. He tore his eyes away from the MG in the junkyard. A voice reached him dimly, Billy the Kidney’s voice: “Get down from there, Barney. Barney, get down.” He looked down to see Allie Roon still grinning at the bottom of the fence. Gaining confidence, he swiveled to search for Billy the Kidney, saw him in the wheelchair, his mouth open and his voice reaching Barney like an echo in mountain passes. “Come on, Barney. You’ll catch holy hell.…”
Barney needed no further urging, because he wanted to get down from there and feel the earth beneath his feet, feel his heart getting back to normal, feel his breathing becoming regular. Slowly, methodically, moving one hand and one foot at a time as if he were descending a precipice, he managed to reach the bottom without emergency. His heart was still beating very hard, though, dancing in his body the way Allie Roon danced as they made their way to Billy the Kidney in his wheelchair.
“Jesus,” Billy said. “You looked like you were frozen to the spot up there. What were you doing, anyway?”
“I spotted a car in the yard. An MG. It looked almost like new. I was studying it,” Barney said, grateful that his breath was coming regularly now and his heart was slowing down.
“It’s getting cold,” Billy said. “Let’s get inside.”
Barney looked back at the fence and shivered, a chill rippling across his flesh. He had had the nightmare before, the car and him in it and the car slanting down the hill headed for the girl, but it had never happened in the daytime, not while he was awake. Was it possible to have a nightmare while you were awake?
Allie Roon danced ahead, but slowly now, in a sad parody of a waltz. Billy the Kidney brooded in the wheelchair as Barney pushed him along.
“You sure nothing happened to you up on that fence?” Billy asked.
“Nothing,” Barney said, making his voice flat, final, so that Billy would stop asking questions.
But he knew he had seen something.
What he didn’t find out until later was that he had seen the Bumblebee for the first time.
2
MAZZO would probably die first, but there were no guarantees. Actually, it was a toss-up among all of them—Mazzo and Ronson, then Billy the Kidney and Allie Roon. Surprisingly enough, Ronson was responding to the merchandise while the others remained unchanged. There wasn’t supposed to be any response, of course, in the sense that improvement could be expected. And a cure was out of the question. Looking at Billy the Kidney, Barney often winced at the fact of Billy’s imminent death, the certainty of it, the complete absence of hope.
Observing Ronson now in Isolation, still in the Ice Age, silent and unmoving, all the wires and doodads intact, Barney was depressed. He pictured in his mind Ronson in the ring, sleek and slender and swift, jabbing away at an opponent, connecting with a right and then a left as the crowd cheered, and later standing with his hands over his head, the winner.
Turning away, he encountered Bascam, who had padded through the doorway, a computer printout in her hand. She ignored Barney as she studied Ronson on the table and then looked at her watch and checked something on the printout, making a mark with her pen. Ronson was also being watched in Observation in another part of the Complex, all of his reactions and movements recorded on a panel of monitors, under constant surveillance.
Bascam was tall and thin and as impersonal as a thermometer. Her body revealed no contours beneath the green uniform. Her graying hair was pulled into a tight bun at the back of her head. He had never seen her register an emotion: She never smiled or frowned or laughed or displayed happiness or sadness. Maybe you needed to deaden your emotions in a place like this. Yet she had blushed with embarrassment this morning when she’d suggested that Barney smell the lilacs. It was good to know that Bascam was human after all. He wasn’t always sure about the Handyman.
Downstairs now, Barney spotted Billy the Kidney in his wheelchair ne
ar Mazzo’s room. Barney was held by the expression on Billy’s face. Sad. No, not sad. What then? He groped for the word and found it: wistful. Billy was looking toward Mazzo’s doorway with a wistful woebegone expression on his face. Like there was something in Mazzo’s room that he wanted more than anything else in the world and couldn’t have.
Sensing Barney’s presence, Billy turned around, spotted Barney, and instantly blushed, the glow a vivid contrast to his usual yellow pallor. Now Barney saw something else on Billy’s face: guilt.
“What’s going on?” Barney asked.
“Nothing, nothing’s going on,” Billy said, swiveling his wheelchair around so that Barney couldn’t look into his eyes.
“What are you hanging around Mazzo’s room for?” Barney asked, lowering his voice so that Mazzo couldn’t hear.
Billy shrugged, still turned away, his face still scarlet.
Everybody hung around Mazzo’s room. Doctors and nurses and the aides. They couldn’t do enough for Mazzo, even though his disposition was rotten and he was always moaning and groaning and bitching. And belching and farting.
“That telephone,” Billy said, sad and wistful.
“Jeez,” Barney said. “Who would you call if you had a phone? You said yourself there’s nobody out there to even write a letter to.”
“I got a lot of calls I can make,” Billy said. “A lot of people I can call. There’s a whole bunch of people to talk to.
Barney didn’t reply. He didn’t want to find out anything personal about Billy. And vice versa.
“I had a phone at my disposal last year at this other place I was before coming here,” Billy said, still not looking at Barney and his voice whispered and confidential. “The phone was in a small office that nobody ever used and I discovered it by accident. I’d sneak in there and make my calls.
“I’d call, oh, the local radio station and make a request for a song, although I didn’t have a radio—the station had a request number in the phone book. Or I’d call the police station downtown and tell them I was new in town and ask the location of a street, like I wanted to visit there. Then there were the Dial numbers.”
Billy’s voice grew dreamy now. “The Dial numbers were nice. I found them in the phone book. Dial-A-Prayer and you’d hear a pretty good sermon. Or at least a voice, even if it was recorded. Then there was Dial-A-Diet. That was operated by the board of health, I think, and they gave you menus for certain kinds of diets if you had a disease or a special physical condition or something. The diets sounded terrible, but it was nice hearing a girl or a woman talk. They always picked people with beautiful voices. Then there were the wrong numbers.”
Billy shook his head in fond remembrance. “Those wrong numbers. See, I’d pick any old number from the phone book and dial it and somebody would answer and I’d try to fake them out, you know. Pretending I was trying to find my Uncle Louis, say, who used to live at that address, and I’d sometimes get a conversation going. I was pretty good at it, too, Barney.”
Barney thought of Billy the Kidney sitting in a hospital trying to make contact with the outside world. Dial-A-Diet, for Christ’s sake.
“You didn’t make one of those obscene phone calls, did you, Billy?” Barney asked, joking, keeping his voice light, wanting to keep everything light and bright.
Billy looked at him in dismay. “I’d never do anything like that. I didn’t take advantage of the phone, either. I never made long-distance calls. I always kept it local. I just wanted to hear some voices at the other end of the line.”
Stop it, Barney thought. I don’t want to start feeling bad for anybody, not Billy the Kidney, not anybody. He knew tricks about not thinking certain things, but you couldn’t control what other people thought or said. Tempo, rhythm.
“Listen, Billy, if you want a phone so much, then why don’t you ask the Handyman to put one in for you?”
“No money,” Billy said. “I checked the Handyman. He said you need money for everything extra here. He said the grants don’t even cover operating expenses. I don’t have any money. But Mazzo’s loaded. His family is rich. They can afford a phone.”
“I don’t have any money either,” Barney said, puzzled suddenly. Why is it that some people have money and others don’t? Why aren’t Billy the Kidney and I rich like Mazzo? Some things he knew, and he knew he wasn’t rich, knew he was as broke as Billy the Kidney.
“Let’s see,” Barney said, snapping his fingers, rhythm, tempo, but keeping his voice low. “If you can’t have a phone of your own, there ought to be a way to get you the use of one.”
Billy perked up, eyes shining, not the flashing of pain but something else, expectation.
“There’s got to be a way,” Barney said.
“You think so?”
“I know it. Let me work on it, Billy.”
Billy sighed, the spell broken, the brightness gone. “Hell, Barney, how can you get a phone, even the use of one?”
“Look, Billy, how long have I been here in the Complex?”
Billy frowned, thinking. “Four or five weeks, I guess. I remember the day you came. It was raining cats and dogs. End of March or first part of April. You ran like a bat out of hell from the car to the door. Know why I remember?”
“Why?” Barney asked, curious about how other people saw him. You see yourself only in mirrors, and mirrors don’t show everything.
“Because everybody arrives here in an ambulance. On a stretcher. With IV’s and things. But not you. Not Barney Snow. You got out of this big black car and you ran into the place. You actually ran.” Billy fooled with the controls of his wheelchair. “Jesus, Barney, for a while there I really hated your guts. Nobody is supposed to run into this place, like he’s warming up for the Boston marathon.”
“But you learned to love my terrific personality, right, Billy? Even though …”
“Yeah,” Billy said. “Even though.” Voice flat, gone dead.
Even though I’m not going to die but you are. And the others, too: Little Allie Roon and poor Ronson in the Ice Age and Mazzo, the bastard.
“Is that why Mazzo hates me so much?” Barney asked.
Billy squirmed in the wheelchair. “What the hell, Barney. Mazzo’s not the greatest guy in the world. But he’s rich and handsome and had everything going for him. He was a star athlete. And now he’s …”
“I know,” Barney said. “He’s going to die.” But me, not rich and not handsome and not much going for me, I’m safe. Barney used his old trick and turned off the thoughts, not wanting to dwell on who was going to live and who was going to die because sooner or later he would have to confront the fact of Billy’s death and he didn’t want to do that. “Let’s get back on the track, Billy. What we were talking about? I’ve been here exactly six weeks tomorrow. And in that time, Billy, have I ever conned you? Ever lied? Ever been a phony?” Maybe with other people but never with Billy.
“Not that I ever found out,” Billy said, becoming aloof now and not going all the way with Barney. The talk of Barney’s arrival here, the running, had brought out the difference between them. I’m still the alien here, Barney thought, almost an enemy.
“Okay, then, let me tell you this: I will get you a phone. A phone at your disposal. That’s a promise. And Barney Snow does not break promises.”
“Ah, you don’t have to promise anything,” Billy said.
“I know, I know. But I’m promising anyway,” Barney said, wondering why he was doing it.
Mazzo’s voice interrupted them: “Who’s out there?” Whining and querulous. “I know somebody’s out there. Who’s out there spying on me?”
“Who wants to spy on you, you bastard?” Barney yelled back.
“Is that you, Barney Snow? Is that you out there spying on me? Eavesdropping?” A spoiled, little boy’s voice.
Barney looked down at Billy. “Want to see that telephone up close? Hold it in your hand? Hear the dial tone?”
Billy grinned, sheepish but eager, a child’s grin. We’re c
hildren here, Barney thought, we’re all children. Orphans, in fact. Stripped down, nothing guarding us but our skin. And skin no protection at all. “Come on, Billy. Let’s pay Mazzo a visit and see that telephone.”
They went into Mazzo’s room, Barney pushing the wheelchair. Christ, but Mazzo was handsome, and the thing that was killing him had not diminished his beauty. In fact, the disease seemed to heighten it, accenting the line of his jaw, emphasizing the delicate structure of his cheekbones and forehead, enhancing the startling blue of his eyes, even more striking with the fever dancing in them. His flesh was splotchy, blotches like healed burns scattered on his face and forehead. His blond hair was thin, limp with perspiration, scalp pale and scaly. But through it all shone his unaccountable beauty. Despite the disease and its ravages. And his rotten disposition.
Mazzo eyed them suspiciously from the bed. Barney forced a smile. “Hi, Mazzo.”
“What do you want?” Mazzo asked, nasty as usual.
Barney paid no attention to Mazzo’s attitude; it was par for the course. “Just thought we’d drop by and say hello.”
Mazzo directed his attention to Billy. Billy was staring at the telephone, eyes wide with enchantment. The instrument hung on the wall above and to the left of Mazzo’s bed, within easy reach. One of those one-piece jobs, the dial imbedded in the receiver itself.
“Hey,” Mazzo said, catching on. “That’s why you’re here. You want to see my telephone.” My telephone. Just like he always said my room, my bed. As if he owned the whole world.
“It’s a beautiful instrument,” Barney said admiringly. “I was telling Billy about it. My father worked for the phone company and told me all about them. This one you’ve got is a beautiful piece of work. What they call a self-contained dial.” He was making it all up, of course, spinning his wheels, marveling at his ability to lie, to improvise at short notice.
Mazzo looked at the telephone, studying it as if he had never seen it before. “A telephone is a telephone,” he said finally.