A few days later Ish was arriving back to the tenement from the ration line with jugs of water from the stacks of ration cards the tenement had given him. The dust storm raged and grew until rivaled cataclysm, it made all movement in the zone impossible, all work ceased and all rations held. Then it stopped. Ish tapped into his reserve and watered the building.
The presence of the white beam standing and towering over his block had returned and he felt the eyes of many analysts in dark airconditioned rooms looking at him. He didn’t turn his head to look at it, but he did move his eyes and stare atas if someone on the other side of the camera was watching him at that very moment. When he walked into the lobby, some of the items Walter was organizing days prior were still there and been shoved into a corner. At the top of the slowly destabilizing staircase was Chen, the plump Asian man with dark complexion and jet black hair that had been slicked back with grease which also stained his once white tank top who guarded the tenement, he wore a serious face and he was talking to 2 small women whom he would not let up past the final step. The chair Chen was in was set to maximum recline and sat on 6 rollers which provided him omnidirectional latitude to block the women as they tried to push past him up the stairs.
“You can’t come up.” Chen said as he poked the barrel of his shotgun into 1 of the women’s shoulder.
Chen looked more relaxed than Ish had been in his entire life, he sat as if he owned the entire world sitting at the top of the stairs which might as well have been a mighty moat around a fine european castle fit for a duke of many titles and lands. There were many bottles of beer, a magazine with an almost naked woman and an aluminum tray with fresh tobacco sitting next to him. His sawed off shotgun sat calmly in the crook of his shoulder when he wasn’t using it as a prop to ward off the 2 women.
“Chen.” Ish said as he nodded his head, trying to squeeze by the women without engaging with them.
He was annoyed that Chen had let them in this far when they never should have entered the building. When Ish got closer he saw they were young, 18 or 19 years old and then Chen’s behavior suddenly all made sense to Ish whether he wanted it too or not. While Chen sat relaxed in his chair content to entertain any number of possibilities, his finger remained neatly on the trigger guard of his shotgun, not because they were a threat, but because that’s where the finger of the doorguard belonged. Ish thought Chen was missing something horrible about the situation, he was enjoying their company too much for how desperate the pair was. They were talking, their lips frantically flapping like flags in the wind. To him they were 2 pretty girls giving him all their attention and that seemed to override any global sense of the predicament.
“Is there really no more rooms or is that just what you tell everyone? We can take the hallway, pitch tents at the end.” One woman said
“Do you live alone?” And then the other.
Before Chen could answer Ish put his hand on Chen’s shoulder. Chen stood up and both of them walked a few steps away to speak. The 2 girls felt emboldened by this and the one was nearly sure they had found a new place to live so she started to beam and rubbed her sister’s shoulder. They both stepped up the final step and looked down the long hallways of the first floor of the tenement.
“That weasel man is going to take them. He keeps poking his head in here, walking in and coming up the stairs to talk to me as if he’s welcome.” Chen exasperated
Ish looked at the girls again, they were thin as rails with even thinner blonde hair. Their skin was still light and was taught against sharp jaws and their blue eyes had yet to become sunken in or be stained by harsh UV. Looking at them closer Ish realized they were probably twins.
“I dunt think they re identical.” He added.
“We talk about this every month. We can’t take anyone else in.” Ish said flatly.
Just at that moment Ish knee started to ache and he felt something like a big bullfrog croaking in chest. A deep force inside of him started trying to break free, like a caged gorilla having its infant stolen, it raged in a berserkers frenzy, tearing and gnawing at his insides. Though the feeling failed to materialize. He bent over and rubbed his sore knee.
“I have some liniment. Emma got it for me in the Lanoi. My knees are old too. Too much hiking.” Chen said
“Maybe. Thanks.” Ish replied.
Chen turned around and looked at the girls.
“Ladies I’m doin my best to improve your odds here with the good sir, but if you can’t take the simple instructions to stay on the staircase then I’m fraid’ it might not work out.” Chen said to the girls, whose wandering had almost brought them to the second floor.
They both snapped to like army men receiving an order from an ornery drill sergeant and silently stood at attention on the staircase.
“Look how nice they listen.” Chen said with a big grin.
Ish said nothing, wanting to go back to his apartment. Less and less competent people are living in the tenement this year, some like Walter have simply been tolled over and over by the spiteful Gaia, losing what they used to be. The last drought was hard on him and he became delirious for many days. Another time he got caught scavenging in the Bygone district by acid rain, he had 2nd degree burns all over his body and he went feverish for weeks after. He only lived because Emma nursed him every day. Last year he caught a strain of Epstein Barr that had been laying dormant in permafrost, of which he never fully recovered. Once an oldworld scholar, he could talk endlessly about the Native peoples of California, now he can barely string 2 sentences together. They need more Chen’s, Levy's, more Emmas’s. 2 sisters in their early 30s, strong women with good heads on their shoulders had left 2 weeks ago and they did it in the middle of the night.
Ish knew these 2 girls would be sorry replacements for them, but their beauty did call to him. He found himself falling under the same spell Chen was, he was nearly overcome by both paternalism and desire, the vices of men in powerful positions. In the midst of thoughts he felt ashamed of he gestured them over, neither could contain their smiles.
“Tell me some things.” Ish said.
The lighter girl was puzzled by the question, but the one with dark complexion snapped to again, she would make a fine ancillary Ish thought. She told them their story, how their father had died and their mother disappeared overnight. How they had been abused. A familiar story. The girl seemed to have left them, her eyes watered and stared off into space as she recounted 1 tragedy after the next. Chen listened with great care, but Ish stood by awkwardly, unsure if he should offer his condolences for their long life of hardship.
“He was going to take Jedda, the ancillary. He was a big stupid pervert, she told him no 10 times just that week. Then they came to check visas in our building. Tore it apart while they were at it, after they left he came back to our flat and… I came up behind him and I stuck him in the neck wi----”
Ish raised his hand in a stern motion as a hardened expression came over his face, the momentum of the memory leaving the girl and she returned to this reality, her eyes had gone wide and her lip quivered, then she looked down at her feet which were restless.
“Im sorry, plea-- I’m sorry. I didn’t know you guys we--- I don’t--- I thought you would have li---”
Ish leaned in close to them, the girl stopped talking and the water opened like a faucet from the old world.. She sobbed. The girl, whose name wasn’t even known to Ish, was trying to hold back a lifetime of agony that was spilling out all at once.
“Please.” she whimpered.
They were now all sharing the same air, just like he had done earlier with Okawa. Just like he did all the time. He had much practice talking in this faint voice, a voice so quiet not even God could listen in.
“Not here. Not ever. No matter how sure we are that this building isn’t bugged, don’t ever admit to something like that out loud. We do very particular things.” Ish said
“Dats’ right. This buildin’ aint’ seen no ancellery’ in thwree’ years.” Chen whispered.
“There’s strict rules. About what you can say. Where you can go. When you can leave, Who you can leave with. Who you can associate with. They catalog everything you have ever done.”
“We know! We know!” They both said. The girls were so close, so close to a new life. Living here where Chen sat to watch dutifully at the door and this seemingly wise man made a decision might see them another 10 years. They would say or do anything to make it happen. After all the hell men had put them through, the 2 girls would do absolutely anything for these 2 men at that moment. Ish knew it. Chen knew it. The girls knew it.
Ish left no room for inference or assumption, going on in detail about more rules and protocol that had kept them under the radar for as many years as it did. The lighter girl put up her finger and sprung back down the stair case and returned with a pen and paper.
“Don’t write this down. Commit it to memory. Say it over 10,000 times. Memorize every pillar location. Burn into your animal brain to put your eyes and head to the ground every time you walk into its view. These aren’t rules you should think about, they are dogma. Scripture.”
After much talk of logistics, Ish thought this might not work out as bad as he thought it would. They brought them to the flat that had been recently emptied. The girls were smart and they had the advantage(and disadvantage) of being beautiful, which they openly spoke about leveraging. Emma would have work for them.
Ish gave Chen a long look about exactly what they both knew. Chen nodded in affirmation and went back to his chair, picking up his magazine as the girls danced around their new apartment. Ish rubbed his forehead hard and then ran his hands through his hair. It used to be grayer, but most of it was in the front where the hairline has since receded.
“I need a haircut.” He whispered to only himself while turning to leave.
“Ish. I never doubted you would let them stay. Do you need that liniment?” Chen said without taking his eyes off the magazine.
“No.” Ish said.
---
Ish entered his apartment, both Emma and Levy had let themselves in and were looking over a paper map. Levy greeted Ish and came in close to whisper.
“I will leave first.” Levy said. Then he grinned and left.
Ish stood in the exact stance he received the whisper for a long moment after Levy left and shut the door, and then he walked over and looked a the stack of papers next to the maps. He picked one up, for some reason he held it gently with 2 hands. There were words scribbled in pen centered on the page, the margins neatly organized to keep the same amount of space on both sides of each line. On his first skim it was some gibberish about birds and wise old trees.
“Levy and I were exchanging poems.” Emma said.
Emma lived directly below Ish, she is long limbed and thin, with black hair extending only to her shoulders which shimmered in iridescence, though she wore the ever expanding streaks of gray in them with pride. Her few articles of clothing are patches on patches. She has a grimshawed necklace that reminds Ish that some people are left in the world that still care to make things for no reason other than beauty.
“Can I read it? Is that rude to ask? Ish said
“You can read it. Levy reads his to you all the time.” Emma said
“Ya, but he’s insane. I didn’t know-- Maybe it was just for you.” Ish replied
“You can read it” Emma said
“Are you sure?” Ish asked
“Yes. She said.
The California orange beamed on Ish's back from the distant seawall and it reflected off the page with royal luminescence. Emma couldn't decide whether or not she wanted to watch him read it and she tried to mask her embarrassment, but the the lip bite and shuffle in place disturbed Ish’s sense that she was interested in sharing the poem. However it was in his apartment and Ish thought he deserved to read it. Occasionally her eyes darted upward from the fixed position they were set at to the floor to see what Ish’s eyes were doing.
They however were busy, moving rhythmically in a smooth cascade until they reached stillness, remaining there for almost a whole minute. Ish looked from place to place fixing his attention. He had absolutely no idea what to say.
Ish continues to stand there and then tries to read the poem again, but his eyes keep moving around on the page. He shuffled a bit and then stretched his neck and betrayed his own sense of being undisturbed.
“I like it.” Ish said
Emma, sensing Ish’s discomfort, started laughing at him. This greatly embarrassed Ish, who has no experience of poems like Levy.
“You’re such a philistine." Emma said.
Ish stood there, breaking out into a sweat, partly out of embarrassment at not knowing what a philistine was and partly because it was 109 degrees according to the red line on the wall. He didn’t know what to say. He did like the poem a lot, he’d like to read it again in privacy without her looking at him expectedly every 5 seconds. He usually was very good at saying what he meant, but at this moment he had absolutely no idea what he was meaning. There was a coldness in his belly that her poem had warmed, but he didn’t know to say that. He always felt awkward around her. Now here she was laughing in his face in his own apartment. He had a quarter of a mind to tell her to leave. But he didn’t.
“Well?” She said with her hands on her hips and her narrow head tilted.
Ish felt paralyzed. He had had guns pointed at him a dozen times in his life and yet here he was frozen solid trying to say how he felt about a woman’s poem.
Then Emma’s eyes started to roll back into her head and she started to convulse. Ish stepped toward her thinking that she might fall back and hit her head, but she came to and started to do an odd dance all around Ish, waving her hands and doing moves Ish thought looked like Kung Fu.
“I will pull the thoughts out of you. The old Crone taught me this spell.” Emma said sardonically.
Ish stood there awkwardly, playing along with Emma’s skit because he knew it would bring her pleasure. But his attention was pulled away, he looked toward the sun which was creeping slowly away and was now a sunken halfmoon like the eyes of sunsetting denizens of the zone. He was at least relieved that he wasn’t expected to speak anymore and to only be a prop in Emma’s bit.
Her eyes rolled back into her head again and then she started her best Ish impression.
Her face went flat and she said
“words and abstractions, about their syntax, the spelling, the interplay of adjective, noun, verb and pun. The smells, memories and emotions being evoked and toyed with.”
She pointed her finger up as if she had something intellectual to say.
“And the prose, subtle and intentional moments of poetry.”
“I don’t do that at all.”
Ish said, embarrassed. He tapped his feet and looked towards the sun again, it was almost to bed for the evening.
“I thought your poem was lovely, I guess I just didn’t get it.”
Ish regretted that sentence immensely after it tripped out of his mouth.
With the grace he always expects from her she gives him a playful push and then a hug, the kind a toddler might give after not seeing someone all day. An absolute giving over of herself to Ish. Emma hugs everyone, all the time. But Ish couldn’t help himself, he wanted to believe in this hug there was an invitation. He’s perceptive about most things. It was true that Levy did have better eye sight, but Ish could read a man’s intentions by his stride alone. Though when it comes to this woman he’s a blind as a bat. Nothing about the way she laughed or walked gave Ish a clue about what she was intending. Though there was enough light coming through from her that Ish thought he did in fact see the affection he craved. He tried to return it, placing his hand on her upper back and rubbing it softly. His hand migrated lower, almost to her lumbar when he gave just a moment of hesitation that might signal the hug is over, and then it was.
The California orange reached its penultimate point over the crest of the seawall and the room grew a shade darker.
“I have to go meet Levy.” Ish said.