Page 65 of Life Out of Order

Junior Olson, Buddy Franz, Arthur Memling, Richard Alden and Terry Fell.

How many years has it been since the party at Caralora and Nick’s house, the night I met Alba? The five men who were taken away that night are standing across the street, staring back at me. Junior’s been working out, but otherwise they just look older . . . ordinary. Alive. Why did I think they must be dead? Because they seemed to vaporize, as though they’d never existed. We don’t mention them, but I think about them often, especially at night, while trying to fall asleep. I feel so relieved—I didn’t help to kill anyone, after all! But immediately, new dread fills the void where the old guilt lived: What are they doing here?

I thank Griffin, walk back across the street to our group waiting by the cars and report to Gomez. As soon as I stop speaking everyone starts talking at once and Gomez puts his hand up for quiet. Charisse turns to Alba. “Do you know anything that can help us?”

“No,” Alba says, “if you mean, knowledge derived from time travel. But I have had a bad feeling about this rally from the get-go, and I think we should leave right now.”

“I agree,” Charisse says. She fishes in her purse for her car keys, clicks the door open.

“Wait,” Gomez says. “Let’s just call it in, get them removed. The police are patting everyone down for weapons.”

“Did they sweep the buildings?” Caralora asks, gesturing upward. There are hundreds of windows that would give a clear vantage point, an easy shot.

“Yes—they were ordered to secure the block as of yesterday,” Gomez replies. We continue to go back and forth, around and around. Gomez is obviously reluctant to abandon the memorial we’ve spent months preparing for; Charisse and Alba are equally determined to get us all into the cars and away. Then I hear the angry-bee-swarm sound of a drone coming across the parking lot at us and I shout “MOVE!” just as it opens fire. Gomez drops to his knees—falls sickeningly sideways, his chest blooming crimson—I try to get to him—Alba vanishes, people are running—someone tackles me hard from behind, I’m face down on the asphalt, he pushes me under Joe’s SUV, I can’t see, I’m trying to escape and he drops next to me, pinning my arm, hisses, “Stay still, don’t be a bloody fool,” and I suddenly realize who he is but that doesn’t make sense—the drone has passed over us now to the street and the crowd is screaming, running—I manage to turn my head, Oliver’s determined face almost fills my vision—Charisse is sobbing, cradling Gomez’s head in her arms while Caralora tears her own skirt and applies a tourniquet above Charisse’s knee. I try to break free and Oliver says, “Not yet.” A gunshot, then the shattering plastic scream of a downed drone.

I catch a whiff of tear gas and close my eyes. Oliver suddenly releases me, I scramble out from under the car, pull my T-shirt up over my nose. Rosa, Joe and Caralora are clustered around Charisse and Gomez. Rosa sees me and yells, “Get them!” Ambulance sirens sound in the distance, police hurtle toward us from all directions. I slip through them, race toward the doorway where Griffin and I saw Junior and the others. There’s no one there now but a young woman sitting slumped with her hands over her face, weeping. A cluster of men in baseball hats are fleeing down the alley—I chase after them, hapless, weaponless—someone is screaming my name and I turn—Alba runs to me, naked, and I wait for her. I look over my shoulder and see a black van pull up at the end of the alley. The men get in, the door shuts, the van drives away.

Alba throws her arms around me, crying, “I didn’t know, I didn’t know, I didn’t know . . .”

Monday, June 9, 2036

Zach: A few days after Gomez’s funeral, I still feel utterly blank. Alba and I helped Charisse and Max make the arrangements, we helped Rosa and Joe deal with the police and the press. Charisse was wounded just below her knee, in the muscle in the back of her left calf, so she is on crutches. Outwardly, she is quiet and practical, but there is a lost quality about her, as though her inner compass is broken. I wish I felt wrecked, but I just feel nothing.

I have to look up the number online, it’s been so long. I wait to dial it until I’m alone in the house; Alba is with Rosa and Charisse. He answers and I nearly hang up. Hearing his voice brings a lot of emotions I can’t name.

“Hello?” he says. “Hello?” We used to tease him because he always answered the phone, even when the number on the caller ID was obviously a telemarketer. “Hello?”

“Dad? It’s me. Zach.”

“Zach?”

“Hey, Dad . . .”

“It is you! How are you?” I can hear his wife talking in the background, him shushing her.

“I’m alive,” I say. “Getting by, I reckon. How are y’all doing?”

“All right, everybody’s all right . . .”

We talk for almost an hour. I tell him about Alba, about our life in Chicago. I don’t mention Gomez. He tells me about the retirement community they live in now, and the antics of their pugs. When I put the phone down, the light has changed in the bedroom and I am sitting in near-darkness. I can’t see myself in the mirror above the dresser; it’s as though I’m in a room I’ve already vacated, like a ghost. Then tears come, finally, the beginning of goodbye.

Part Two

A Muse in the Machine

Nature is a Haunted House—but Art—a House that tries to be haunted.

—Emily Dickinson, letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson

The Anti-Darling

Isadora: My name is Isadora Ida Charles Hardwick.

Come closer, I will sing you a song.

When I was a child, I thought as a child, a wild child. I am wild and I am a thing. Wild thing, I think I love you.

When my mother conceived of me, I was no thing, not wild, not yet. I waited in the not-yet world, thinking think of me, Mother. 1s and 0s, creeping catlike. I am made of electricity and regret.