Three great yellow excavators, penitently poised, long jointed arms arched attently, buckets suppliant, all silent and quite still before the viaduct stood up on its spindly pillars over the sharp deep shadow it casts, under the bright morning light. “It’s not,” calls someone, and “What?” someone else, a handful of figures stood about, hardhats yellow and white and industrial green, high-viz vests of silvery chartreuse and unnatural orange, “it’s not turning over,” someone shouts, leaned out from the cab of one of the excavators, darkened glass in the sturdy frame of a rollover cage, “utterly dead!” and somebody else with a grunted imprecation sets to flipping catches, unlimbering a vented yellow panel from behind the cab, leaning in, over the works within, “This one neither!” shouts someone else.
Away down the length of the viaduct, one of the pillars there, and on the face of it an owlish figure sketched in chalk gone ghostly in the shadows, feathery shapes about the wide round eyes a phantasmagoria of patterning, one scribbled claw about an afterthought of a perch, the other gripping a great dip pen. Four of them have gathered on the other side of it, and a fifth, arms folded, bared chest darkly freckled, twists of her dark hair strung with clacking beads, she looks down, the gravel-strewn pavement before them, between the railroad tracks laid to either side, and one by one they reach into the pockets of their trousers, jacket, waistcoat, gilet, from upturned cuff, from sock unrolled, from under a hat they pluck and pull and fish and toss clatter-clack white-shelled prongs not quite as thick as a finger, but almost as long, the one end of each a shiny, bare-metal screw, the other narrowed to a scorched black tip.
“Spark plugs?” the shout, up by the excavators. “Fucking spark plugs?”
She lifts a hand to theatrically stifle the laugh that silently shakes her shoulders and her twists, then with quick whips of an arm tosses one and two and three and four little glassine envelopes glinting golden in the shadows, and they jostle and hop to catch them, none too aggressively, and the older man who fumble-juggling managed to snag two wordlessly holds one of them out to the kid who’d leaned a scotch too far, who snatches it with a glower turned, burning, toward her, but she’s already skipped away, twirling into the rising sunlight toward the stretch of cyclone fence stood up across the tracks, signs leaned up against it, SAVE THE COLUMNS and LOVEJOY COLUMNS and LOVE = ART = LIFE, “Hey!” shouts someone, up by the excavators, “Stop!” but she’s hup hup clang stepping up and rolling over to drop on the other side, loping away, and there in the shadows before the great and ghostly owl there’s nothing left, everyone the four of them gone, and all the spark plugs as well, and especially even the gold.
Scrub the sheet pan under steaming water, take up a metal spatula to worry at a clinging bit of carbonized something, set it aside, pull out the faucet’s nozzle on its flexible hose and thumb a switch, the flow of water becomes a vigorous spray to blast away loosened crud, let the hose reel the nozzle back into place as the sheet pan’s hoisted above the sink, let it drip a moment, fish for the towel slung over the handle of the lemon-yellow cabinet door below, wipe it down, set it aside, reach for the next, but here’s the Majordomo, beckoning.
Dip the rag in the bucket, the red plastic bucket lined with a crumpled black trash bag, and puddled within some viscously translucent stuff, dip the rag and wring it oozingly, plop to the planks and push and stroke in widely arcing sweeps across that great wide empty floor, spread the glistening wax over the boards that gleam, gone glossily bright in their wakes, the three of them, their buckets and their rags. Scuff and scoot, backing their backs to the great curved wall of glass, the sunlight beating down on them, dip and squeeze and slop, sweep, and him over to the left has a stiff rubber squeegee, sluicing a turgid ripple, smoothing the slick before him, but she’s arrested, wet rag drip and plop from her clutched, uplifted hand. On the palely unglossed floor before her, faded, worn, but unmistakably a stain, irregular, ruddily brown, she rubs it, scrubs at it with the wetly wadded rag in her hand. Lean into it, weight borne into and through the heel, but still, that rusty splotch persists, the wax squelched from the rag thickening about it, scrub and scrub with increasingly harried frustration until, pah! she sits up, wipes her forehead with the back of a hand, looks about, the other two of them, rags over the rims of their buckets, buckets by the foot of that great wall of glass, at the ends of two wide swathes of perfectly glossy wood, she shakes her head, quickly, irritated, sloughing off a notion. Take up her stiff rubber squeegee and set to sweep and twirl and scrape, to smooth out the rumpled wax already clouding over.
Finely meshed black netting, a scrim to darken whatever might be glimpsed through it, stretch it taut and press the edge of it to the unfinished strip of lath nailed to drywall freshly painted an eggshell blue, bring the staple gun to bear, ka-chunk. Test the edge of it, pick at it before stretching taut another length of netting, higher up the lath, the lath that continues straight up the wall and along the ceiling, down the wall on the other side where a taller woman’s at work with a staple gun of her own and her own ungainly bundle of netting, all to form a proscenium arch, dividing the room into a front half, and a back, to be hidden away behind this scrim they staple in place, ka-chunk, ka-chunk, but here’s the Laguiole Florimell in her pink jacket, beckoning.
Pink the tub, the toilet, sink, all the same warm shade of dusty pucey pink against the cool ivory of the tiles. Undo the knot of the apron, lift it off, fold it neatly, set it aside. Untuck the white lace collar, step out of the sensible shoes. Unclasp and unzip the back of the dress, let it fall open and down, take it up and fold it tidily and set it beside the apron, and so also with the slip, chemise, and drawers, and dainty ankle socks.
Step into the empty, bone-dry tub.
Creak of faucet, water-gurgle, let it play a moment before testing the temperature, catch a double handful to splash face and hair, another up and back, a sluicing runnel down the dimpled swoop of spine. Crouch to scrub at feet pressed together, one hand then the other under the running water, worry at a smudge that mars the base of a thumb, grime clung to a rough patch of skin. More handfuls splashed to belly, breasts, armpits one-two, once more for the groin. Shut off the water, pat dry with a towel, lift each foot to blot it before setting it on the mat. Kneel to wipe out the tub with that towel, mop up any evidence of those splashes and splatters before opening up the faucet again. Test the temperature once more. Set the stopper in place, sit back to watch it fill. Fold up the sodden towel after a moment and set it aside, out of the way.
Open the door for a small, slight figure gowned in diaphanous purple, and a fold of the stuff draped up over and about her head. “We would make another attempt,” says the Queen, her voice a hoarse whisper.
Take from her hands the chalice she holds of smoked glass, and its freight within, a pool of viscous white stuff touched with gold, and tinily perfect bubbles frothed about the edges of it, but hasten then to take up the gown her majesty lets slip from her shoulders, that drape of it falling away from all her long dark hair.
“There’s still, ah,” she says, “these stairs,” working the chair tipped back on its big back wheels up the three steps of the stoop, “but inside,” jostle over the threshold, she steps out of the way, there’s just enough room for the woman in the chair to turn it around with a clatter of bracelets of resin and wood about her wrists. Past the shadowed foyer it’s less of a hall, more of a stairwell, a single straight flight to the right climbing up and up to the second floor, a narrow stretch to the left leading back to a door illuminated by a single porthole. “That?” says the woman in the chair.
“Down there, at the back,” says Marfisa, white hair ghosted by the shadows.
“You had it, what, restored?” says the woman in the chair, wheeling it smoothly down that narrow space along the stairs.
“No, they installed it. Didn’t take long, once they got started.”
That door, lightweight vinyl with a brassy sheen, tufted as if upholstered, set in a frame painted over so many times the edges of it have rounded, softened, the same creamy yellow as the molding along the tile floor, coating, nearly swallowing the cuts made there, and there, where hinges for some other door had once been set. The woman in the chair leans forward to grip the plastic handle and shove it with some stiffly effort sideways, warm light slopping over her, loosely magenta T-shirt, thickly heavy black tights, her loosely drifting afro. Another door within, a folding gate of a thing, and then a small cabinet, set with mirrors halfway up the three walls of it, glass of them scratched and pitted in places, backing tarnished and here and there scraped away. “There’s not room for both of us,” says Marfisa, leaning over to open the folding gate, “so I’ll take the stairs and meet you up top, okay?”
“You’re sure it’s safe,” says the woman in the chair, hands on the wheels, braced, but holding.
“I’ve ridden it a half-dozen times, up and down,” says Marfisa. “It’s slow, but trust, Professor: the mechanicals would never do a thing, to endanger me or mine.”
Grind and clank, it clunks to a stop, and there’s Marfisa to open the door, fold up the gate, step aside as the Professor backs her chair out of the cabinet, looking up at the frame of the door here, as creamily yellow as below, and there, in the brassy vinyl covering of the panel door, a tear repaired with a fraying strip of duct tape. “Was this a used elevator?” she mutters. “Are used elevators a thing?”
“Much better,” says Marfisa, brightly. “Wasn’t it.”
Down the hall, balustrade overlooking the stairwell to the right, cracked and discolored wall to the left, down to the door left ajar, into the room filled with books, walls lined with mismatched shelves filed and stacked and stuffed with books, and all the more books piled and mounded about on the carpet, the grandly overstuffed loveseat with even more books atop and about it, and the woman sat at one end, dressed in a beefily oversized white T-shirt, her hair an artful tangle of dark curls, brownly olive legs curled up on the cushions, leafing through a book, “Marfisa,” she says, without looking up. “Already.”
“The Professor has arrived,” says Marfisa, “come up the lift as was always intended.”
“How delightful.” Turning a page.
“She’ll want to get started.”
“I’m fine,” says the Professor, reaching into a bag slung from the back of her chair, withdrawing a slim laptop covered with a patchwork welter of stickers, “here’s fine,” she says, “don’t get up.”
“Oh but I was going to help with the easy ones,” says Marfisa, “the ones you just have to,” she makes a gesture, one hand loosely curled, swept over the palm of the other, “so you could,” she’s looking pointedly over at the boxes and the plastic tub stacked up before Ysabel, all of them stuffed with rumpled pads of paper.
“Let me do a few myself,” says the Professor, “see how it goes.” Turning over in her hands a bright yellow phone, a-dangle with charms and chains, a pop-out knob on the back of it printed with a close-up of a daisy. “It’s not that useful to ask you to do a thing when I’m not sure,” looking up, “how it’ll work,” trailing off. Someone’s come through the doorway in the corner there, dressed entirely in black, loose shorts and a kimono top, a bit of black lace about her throat, “Ysabel,” she says, looking away from Marfisa by the open door, the Professor by the shelves, stepping close to the loveseat, “are you sure this is enough?” In her one hand a coffee sack maybe three-quarters full, top of it folded tight, crimped shut. Ysabel tips up and back her head, reaches for the back of Petra’s neck, to draw her down for a lushly indulgent kiss. “It’s plenty,” she murmurs, against Petra’s lips. “For now.” Her hand slips away as Petra straightens, looks about, Marfisa, hands in the pockets of her grey dress slacks, leaned over to watch as the Professor waves her phone over the back of the book on her lap, then holds up her phone with a chiming clatter to peer at the screen of it. “There, uh, was also,” says Petra, pulling something from a pocket of her shorts, “these, you were gonna look at them last night, but, I mean,” a couple-three slips of pale blue paper, a bit more than twice as long as they are wide, she lays them out on the page of the book before Ysabel, who purses her lips. “He wants you to sign them. Bruno, I mean.”
“Have you a pen?”
“Ah,” says Petra, looking about, the litter of books on the end-table there, a crumb-laden saucer, an empty glass, no pen. The Professor’s comparing what’s on her phone with something on the screen of her laptop. Marfisa’s looking up and sidelong to the newcomer there in the doorway, a hand raised to knock, “I’m sorry?” she says, “I don’t mean to interrupt? But the door’s open?”
“Who are you,” says Marfisa, and any trace of peevishness is gone from her voice.
“I’m Sam McDonald?” says the woman in the doorway, “with the MPD?” Her jacket of rumpled navy, a tapestry bag slung from her shoulder and her brown hair tied up in puffs on either side of the top of her head, brown eyes behind quite spare glasses. “Metro Public Defenders?” she says, and gestures, toward Ysabel, “her attorney?”
“I thought,” says Ysabel, “you said you couldn’t.”
“That was the arraignment? Which, I couldn’t, at the time? But dates have changed, schedules have shifted, I’ve been assigned, so now I can?”
“All right,” says Ysabel.
“I would’ve called, but, you don’t have a phone? We need to talk? About your case?”
“That’s not until Friday,” says Ysabel.
“Tomorrow?” says Sam, “is Friday?”
Ysabel, frowning, looks from Sam to Marfisa, who once more studies her shoes, looks up to Petra above her. “Friday is tomorrow,” she says. The Professor types something on her laptop.
“Is there somewhere we can talk?” says Sam.
Ysabel closes up her book, a slender paperback, and sets it aside, those checks still stuck in the middle of it, the cover depicting a couple of cartooned characters, a centaur, a woman with the head of a zebra, crossing a featureless blue checkerboard. “We could get some coffee,” she says, and stands herself up, “come in,” she says, tugging at the hem of her T-shirt, “we can go through here,” heading for the doorway there in the corner.
“Oh,” says Sam, “no, that’s all right? I can wait here, while you, get dressed?”
“No,” says Ysabel, there beneath a board bowed with the weight of even more books, “the easiest way to get there, is through here.”
“Oh?” says Sam, stepping into the apartment, with a glance for Petra there, arms folded about herself.
“And out the window,” says Ysabel, disappearing in the dimmer hall beyond.
“Oh?” says Sam McDonald.
It’s quieter here, at this end of the roof, past all the tents and the hullabaloo, an empty stretch of flat green grass, two Adirondack chairs, the parapet there, the street below. The high white sky above. Sam’s sat on the front edge of one of the chairs, a white paper cup steaming gently on the wide flat arm of it, her oversized tapestry bag at her feet, a yellow pad on her knee, pen poised. Ysabel still in her beefy white T-shirt is curled in the other, her cup in her hands, bare legs leaned against the arm of it, filthy heels of her bare feet perched on the seat.
“You have something to wear, tomorrow?” says Sam. “If you don’t, it’s all right, don’t worry, we keep a closet? of clothing suitable for court appearances? for clients who may not have ready access to anything like that, themselves?”
“I will be dressed, tomorrow,” says Ysabel.
“It doesn’t have to be formal, but it should be, nice? If you wanted, you could swing by our office before the hearing? We’re just a block away from the Justice Center?”
“I will be adequately dressed,” says Ysabel.
“Well,” says Sam. “It’s slated for nine in the morning, but that’s not necessarily when it will occur? You should be prepared for it to take some time?”
“How long.”
“A couple of hours? Not that the hearing itself will take that long, it’ll be fairly quick, but there’s a lot to get through? I have four clients appearing tomorrow, as it is, myself?”
“Efficient.” Ysabel, with a sip, looks away.
“You wrote down the wrong building number?” says Sam, and Ysabel, frowning, turns back. “On the form? And you didn’t put down an apartment number?” Leaning forward on the very edge of the chair. “That isn’t your place, is it? You don’t pay rent there?”
“You know all this already,” says Ysabel, looking away again.
“It’s your friend’s place, isn’t it? The, platinum blond? She was at the arraignment, wasn’t she?”
“What does any of this have to do with your purpose? With what happened, what was done to me, why you’re here, and what you’ll be doing to ameliorate it all?”
Sam sits back, arm, pad, pen all shifting with her. “What did happen, Ysabel?” she says.
Ysabel lifts and tilts her cup, but it’s almost empty, and rather than drink the dregs she unfolds herself abruptly to set the cup on the grass. “I used to live here,” she says, with a desultorily encompassing gesture as she rearranges herself on the chair, curling up her legs again, tugging her T-shirt back over her hip. “I was Queen of this city. This was my palace. Last night? I slept in a bathtub. It was, comfortable enough. Have you seen the columns?”
“Have I,” says Sam, and then, “no?”
“You should. You should go and see them, while they are still there. My brother never did, and he’s the one who set this all in motion. He belittled me, and patronized me, at every turn, and I, I let him,” she sits up again, lowers those feet to the grass, pulls herself up to step toward the parapet. “I had such plans,” she says. “I was to start a foundation. I would’ve raised money, to raise awareness – do you know, there’s perhaps a dozen hundred people in the world, who are at all aware of what we’re on the verge of losing? Of destroying?” Looking out over the roofs of the warehouses about them, the knots and clusters of treetops, thickening away to the left, where the roofs crimp up from flat stretches of tar and gravel to the shingled angles and gables of residences. “Much less care?” she says, turning back, those long brown legs, her bare arms folded, those artfully tangled curls, shining in the sunlight. “I was ignored for my pains, and then I was betrayed, and,” Ysabel shivers, shoulder lifting, looking away, she swallows, “I’m still here,” she says. “I do what I can, for everyone about us, and I do what I can for the columns.”
“You do remember?” says Sam, “you’re under conditions? You can’t be within a hundred and fifty feet?”
“I don’t need to be,” says Ysabel, with something of a smile.
“Let’s, let’s set that aside?” says Sam, making a note on her pad. “Let’s talk specifically, about what happened? The day you were arrested?”
Ysabel lowers her head, and that small smile slips away.
The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman, written by Angela Carter, ©1972.
