n o i s e i s a r t

On seeing her first, the mathematics of her features were closed to him. Individually pleasing, perhaps, but puzzling – their sharp angles promised an underlying answer which he could not glean. It was only once she tilted her head, allowed her hips to twist with the waltz’s rhythm, and released the song she had been holding that her beauty resolved to a single, clear note. She was never as beautiful as was when she sang.

Nicholas stood with the rest of the scattered crowd as the theremin’s last drone tapered away, applauding and cheering around the stub of his cigarette. She stepped down from the stage, tossing her bobbed hair and laughing at some wit’s compliment. Nicholas kneaded at his back for a moment, and sank back down to stare again at the blank notebook.

He plucked for a moment at a stray thread loosening from the back of his scrivener’s gloves. They were lamoran silk, fingerless and cut to the height of fashion three winters ago. Now, he decided, they were emblematic for the ruined state of his life. He turned his hands over and considered their threadbare palms, knuckles visible where his stylus rested. Nicholas Olafson, the tattered dandy – a scarecrow of loose threads and inkstains, a spirit haunting the demimondains, a memento mori for the life of fame.

Japheth Encara, he wrote at last. That was, after all, the name of his client and the subject of his project. They weren’t books to him, these works: just projects. Means of keeping his debtors at bay and preventing Dona Silva from evicting him from his room at the brothel. But not books – in Nicholas’ mind, he still had only written a single book.

He lit another cigarette. Japheth Encara died as he lived, he wrote – a fine beginning, and one which he had not yet been brought to using. For he was a man to whom work was life and life work. He toiled that the gears of our city might stay oiled, and that our cogs continue to turn eternally.

Had Japheth toiled a day in his sycophantic life, Nicholas had failed to discover the date. And while oiled gears and turning cogs were certainly a noble result of the man’s life, Nicholas’ months of research led him to believe that it was greased palms that helped Encara heave his sizeable bulk from his bed every morning. He drew his pen across the page, crossing out the bare three sentences he’d managed today. Turn eternally? That was beneath him – even when it was only a project.

“Excuse me, aren’t you…”

Nicholas turned with a practiced and pained smile. No, he wanted to say. I’m not. I never was. Instead, he tilted his head to one side and held the smile.

“I’m Amelia. You’re him, right? Nicholas Olafson?”

“Yes.”

“I loved Fate’s Lieutenant. Truly.” Amelia put her hand over his, smiling with just a moment of the beauty she showed in song.

“You’re too kind, really. It was…” Nicholas closed his eyes and held his sigh, bracing for the question to come.

“What are you writing?”

And there it was. What was he writing? It had been four years. His social calendar had grown bare, his name slowly lost from the society pages he once strode dashingly across. His fans, when they remembered him, must do so only to wonder just that. What was he writing? He closed his notebook and laid his pen across it.

“I’m working on a biograph.”

“Again? Why? Your novel was inspired, I studied it at cloisters. Your biography has been quite good as well, but…”

Yes, quite. But. But they’re all doggerel. But they’re terrible. But what’s worse, they’re false. You’ve sullied your pen, Nicholas. You have prostituted your muse. But, indeed.

“But you’d prefer me to be working on another novel, I imagine.” Nicholas shrugged and gestured to the other seat at his table, crossing his legs at the knee and beginning to roll a cigarette from his pouch of shag. “It’s quite all right, you’re not the first to tell me so.”

Amelia tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and sat with a laugh. “I thought it was you, but I couldn’t believe it. You’re such the recluse these days. No-one knows wh…”

Nicholas could see the realization travel from her eyes to her mouth, stilling the question unasked. She saw the dilapidated and stained remnants of his finery, the smudges on his collar, the stitches mending his coat, and she understood. She could see it inside him, the blank terror of the empty page, the unfinished and blocked attempts to create again. Nicholas knew he fooled no-one with his answers, that the stink of despair seeped from his pores, that his imminent failure was written plainly across his face.

“There are so many stories,” He began. He had said this so many times, but was still no closer to believing it. “In the people all around us. In the real heroes of our city. I just feel I’m doing them a disservice when I fabulize imagined heroes who combat imagined ills.”

Without asking, she slid a leaf from his bindle and pinched enough from his shag to twist herself a half-length cigarette. “You said that before.” She leaned forwards and touched the paper’s end to the candle, staring at it rather than him. “You said that to The Runner. I read exactly that. Fabulizing imagined heroes.” She puffed her cheeks until the cigarette glowed.

He didn’t answer at first. “I did,” the admission finally came. “And twice before that in print, and dozens of times before and after in conversation. I find it quite the elegant turn of phrase.”

Transport took an hour, everyone knew that. But Amelia hadn’t said anything about the lurch of departing, where your body was cracked like a whip, and bubblegum was the only thing keeping you from cracking your teeth.
She was blind as she fell, but she’d done enough research to come prepared. She swallowed her plug of gum – apparently you only needed it on departures, there wasn’t nearly the same jerk on arrival. She twisted a bit, stretching out cramps from the sudden snap of transport, and wondered why she couldn’t feel herself falling. And then she closed her eyes against the dark, and played the mix she had made herself, songs about teenage empowerment and seizing your destiny. She’d really done it. She had run away, and in an hour’s time she would arrive in Saint Patrick and she’d find her sister and everything would be great again.

The first time she tried it, she knew every single girl at her school had been lying. This was nothing like they’d described it. Her jumpsuit had been made for a man, and was cinched down to the size of her thirteen year old frame with duct tape and bungees.

She clenched her fists, looked up to see Tibor’s knowing smile, and was humiliated. He still thought she was going to back out. That she couldn’t go through with it. Even after all the training, all the preparation – the planning, the lists, the materials, after sneaking out in the middle of the night and running away from everything she’d known, Tibor still thought she was just a scared kid trying to make her parents worried.

When she jumped away from the pylon, she arced her back the way he’d showed her and let the wind do the work of steering her away from the cliff. Transport, the voice on her iPod said, transport engaged. The cliff dissapeared behind her and all she could see were breakers on the rocks below, foam and seething waves and she was plummeting towards them. She clapped her hands to her thighs, diving headfirst towards the beach, diligently pointing her toes like she was in kickline practice again. Departing in three, two, one.

NIcolette had been the first to say she’d done it – her brother and his friends, she’d said, had taken her up mount shasta in their van and then from there they’d tripped to the Rolling Stones show. But Nicolette didn’t say anything about having to keep a wad of bubblegum between your teeth to bite down on, or that you were awake while you were moving. Inside her helmet, the scuba tank’s air smelled like oil, and it was cold enough to make her teeth chatter.

The fear worried his spine like a rosary, each vertebra in turn pinched by mourning bony fingers. He worked his wrists against the bungees, not even expecting to escape but just hoping to forestall his panic for a few breaths.

He knew what was to come – how he would stand unbound from this folding chair, how the light would flicker and his shadow would bow, and how come morning he would wake up to a new nightmare. He knew that there was no way he could stay here, helpless and waiting, while strangers decided his fate on the other side of a locked door. And, no matter what promises he had made, even as he made them he had known that the day would come when he would break them all, and invite the old terrors in again.

We tell you, tapping on our brows, the story as it should be. Marc’s lips moved with the syllables, a primitive oscilloscope measuring the peaks and troughs of the meter. As if the story of a house were told or ever could be. He drummed his raggedly chewed thumbnails on the gel and foam wristguard in fromt of his keyboard. Were told or ever could be. A house, he thought. A haunted house. An old Victorian mansion on a hill by the ocean. The house of Usher. The other kind of house. The house of Windsor. Of Tudor. Of Bourbon and…

The phone rang. Marc instinctively slapped the talk button, reciting his scripted greeting into the headset. “Welcome to Ancient Mysteries of the Tarot. My name is Sirius, and I have been chosen to be your guide. What is your name?”

“Wuwanda,” a shaky voice replied. Marc, as Wanda was speaking, took the opportunity to hold the mute button down and blow his nose

“Let’s see what the cards have in store for you, Wanda.”

Marc’s dialogue was scripted. The computer tracked her telephone number, told him she’d never called before. As he spoke, he used the mouse to click through a dialogue tree, marking the conversational trails so later calls wouldn’t repeat.

“Wanda, I’m getting a lot of energy from the deck suddenly. There’s something bothering you, something you want to ask me.”

“Yes.”

This was going to be a hard one. She wasn’t volunteering, so Marc would have to guess. Would, that is, if he weren’t staring at the next dialogue box with his next gambit spelled out in 14 point Monaco.

“I have separate decks for Moey, Love, and Fortune. Which would you like me to read?”

“Love, please.”

Marc hated his job. Clicking on ‘Love’ and reciting the net lines from memory, he reflected that it certainly beat fast food, and that his guidance counselor, parents and social worker all felt it was gainful employment and left him alone as long as he clocked more than twenty hours a week in.

“The first card is the Knight of Pentacles. This is a mysterious figure for you, someone you can’t figure out. Someone who brings confusion into your life. Do you recognize this person?”

“Oh my god!” Wand cried, “That’s Dave! You’re talking about Dave! What else does it say?”

“DAVID,” Marc typed, under “LOVE.” “DAVID. K.5.”

He closed his eyes again, massaging the bridge of his nose. His sinuses were killing him, he was congested and feverish and this was the last place he wanted to be. “Pentacles are aligned with the element of fire. David is therefore a fiery person, alluring and dangerous. It is best to treat such characters carefully, and think before you act around them.”

“Oh my God,” Wanda was depressingly enthusiastic. Marc almost preferred the creepy old guys who get off trying to have phone sex with people who aren’t phone sex operators. “Totally. Totally Dave. What else?”

“The next card,” Marc began, even as he brought a game of Minesweeper onto the screen, “is the nine of swords. Besiegement. External forces prevent you from acting. There is something outside of you and David which you’re worried about.”

“Judy. That bitch of his ex. This is amazing? What’s it say about her?”

Marc’s supervisor took that moment to tap him firmly on the shoulder, point to the game on Marc’s screen, and point beyond it to the sign affixed to the wall. We are in the business of reading cards, the sign read, Be sure to (the next three words were hand-underlined, in ink, three times. And highlighted. Orange.) Actually Read The Customer’s Cards!

Marc nodded wearily, clicked shut the game, and reached for the deck of cards to the left of the keyboard.

“What’s it say?” Wanda asked again. “Hello? Is Dave going to propose or not?”

Marc cut the deck once. His supervisor walked away. Marc turned the top card. The Lovers. Sadly for Wanda, the Lovers, inverted. As Marc laud the card carefully face up beside the deck, it happened again.

The brush of hs fingertips across the front of the cards brought the inverted figures to life. Animated on the card, the Lovers dropped each others hands. There was Wanda – frizzy red hair, bound back into a ponytail in a laughably sad attempt to contain it. Wanda, in a knockoff designer dress and fake pearls. Wanda, watching as the suited man walked to the open doo for a joyful reunion with a blonde Judy. Wanda, standing alone and weeping mascara into the palms of her hands as the door closed.

“Absolutely,” Marc said, hating himself for each clipped syllable. “Wanda, I can promise you, your love problems are over.”

Wanda hung up after waiting for the rest of the reading as Marc, turning cards with his eyes closed whenever his Manager walked past, spun her a fable of true love conquering all. She hung up in joy and rapture, her faith in the universe second only to her faith in the Ancient Mysteries of the Tarot.

Marc swept the cards into a pile with a shudder. The only thing Ancient around here was the computers. Careful not to look at them, he piled the cards carefullly beside his keyboard again. Where had he been? Like a changed familiar tree. Or like a stairway to the sea. Where down the blind are driven.

Marc’s supervisor returned. Pranjit was classic night school MBA material. Hard working. Dedicated. First generation child of Pakistani immigrants. No understanding of why Marc, who had at one point talked about applying to (swell of angels here, hosannah on the highest) New York University, could end up here, working for him. Pranjit never travelled the maze of rust-red upholstered cubicles without the fat three ring binder from which he would read the appropriate policy for whichever rule the employee was, at the moment, violating.

“Marc,” he began, flipping through the binder. Marc was talked to enough, and had been working here so long, he assumed that in there somewhere he merited his own plastic divider tab. “Your call volume is down again. You should be logging five calls an hour. What’s the problem? Is it the software? I can schedule you for a refresher course.”

“No, Pran.” Marc sighed, the flu and his lethargy causing Pranjit’s name to sound like prawn. He hoped his supervisor wouldn’t take this as a slight. “It’s the cards. Sorry. Takes me forever to get through a reading.”

“Marc, just read from the screen. It’s all automated. Just turn the cards and click the mouse.”

“Okay, Pran. I’ll be faster.”

Pranjit nodded, put a check in a box somewhere, and closed the binder. This was Marc’s cue to turn back to his computer with another sigh.

“Don’t forget to read the cards, Marc. I can’t bring people in to see the shop if you’re not reading the cards.”

Marc wondered if Pranjit knew what reports of a fluorescent-lit cubicle farm full of high school kids, college dropouts and unshaven parolees in formless suits would actually do to business. He realized that he himself had no idea. He’d never understood what led the clients to call. Maybe the fact that they were all parolees would help. Who knew?

His phone rang again.

Pranjit turned back, looking over his shoulder and Marc nodded, moving the cards in front of the keyboard even as he hit Talk and recited his opening.

“Welcome to Ancient Mysteries of the Tarot. My name is Sirius and I have been chosen to be your guide.” Tarot names were like stripper names. Marc had trouble thinking of a good one – all the girls were always Raven or Lilith. It had been Jimmy, a flamboyantly gay member of the theater clique at Marc’s school, who told Marc to use Sirius, which he’d seen in the Astrology section of Cosmo. Jimmy’s Tarot name was Alistair.

… Even though all the lamps were on, the nicotine on the walls jealously hoarded the light, letting only vague scraps of jaundiced yellow reflect eerily onto the ceiling. Whole swaths of the room were unable to beg their share of the terracotta lamplight. Somewhere in the looming shadow that was the bed, Austin moaned. Cricket heard Morgan beside him, whispering in that sibilant twin-tongue of theirs, and knew she was brishing her hair with her silvered comb. Marc’s knock was muffled when he returned; only when Cricket saw that even he had succumbed to the room’s mood and let exhaustion stretch his features did she first let herself imagine that all this might not end well for them. Newman followed Marc in. While Marc set down his shopping bags and sank down one wall to crouch and let his shoulders hang, Newman resumed his running tally of inconveniences and outrage. “Red Bull, had to get Pepesi, not even Coke, Pepsi, we couldn’t even afford Asprin and Marc wouldn’t give me back my credit card and I didn’t think we had…” None of them had eaten since the border. At first it was panic, driving around Mexico, stopping as Austin lurched from the backseat and vomited, again and again, always with the torrential sweats, betrayed by the water that was suddenly compelled to abandon his wracked and ash-pale body. “…food I just want to go home shouldn’t we call an Ambulance what if Austin’s sick he looks sick what if he dies.”