This is the opening salvo in a surreal, urban epic I plan
on writing sometime in the future . .
N was in the City for a two-day conference with his interchangeable colleagues Beau and Craig (in his head, N kept track of them with the nicknames Greed and Avarice: the latter to denote Craig’s relative skill to the primitive tendency). At lunch of day one, N escaped into the unfamiliar streets, relying on the loopholes of ATM services or cellular phone calls to gain his freedom. Now as he walked, unwilling to admit to even himself that he was lost, he longed to swill dry martinis with them and feign interest in sports cars and sport fucking. For at the very least he would not have been robbed or lost, or forced to admit defeat with an awkward phone call. Of course, the situation was not yet hopeless.
N soon passed out of what could be called the skyscraper district, neck-hair raised by the obvious transition but confident that he was now heading back towards a stranger-friendly vein that could take him back to the heart of the city. The impressive architecture of the convention center's (not to mention his hotel) neighborhood was now strictly absent in favor of squat, boorish buildings housing pen spring manufacturers, envelope stuffers, or whatever increasingly obsolete industry a semi-ghetto might support.
He was plainly lost now, but as always calm; the phone flipped open in his hand begged the consideration of taxi cab or Avarice. A quick return to the polyethylene comfort of his hotel room or a bleak, familiar ride back with unpreventable stop at who knows what for no discernible reason.
Before N could make the call, or make the call, the sun thrust its almost vulgar magnifying glass onto the edifice up ahead. It blatantly highlighted the rest of the street, sure, giving crystalline insight to the pools of bum urine, the random refuse, the arrangements of splinters in alleys. But the building up ahead struck nerves. N forgot the phone call and picked up his stride. What could this enormous building be, Its vibrant beige set against the monochrome. As he approached, letters equally large in contrast read “The Federal Building” in no uncertain terms and left the details at that.
N walked closer, momentarily unconcerned with the time, potential xenophobia or the severity of his dilemma. Could this be a figment of his imagination? Some blinding urban oasis with delirium in absentia? What was its proximity and importance to his location, the conference he was skipping, the change in his pocket, the auto-mobile and personal computer that he owned? There must be some trickle-down relevance, he thought, it was “The Federal Building”
He was now on Its block, purposely ignored by two silvering jarheads desperately expressing their feeble importance. They wore unique uniforms displaying their roles as security guards, but the colors and acronyms bespoke of no attachment to the Feds. They reminded N of uniforms young cadets might wear . . .gunless, meritless, shiny in fabrication and carefully coordinated in masculine colors. Both men wore their facial and cranial hair identical, smoke grey and close-cut with template trimmed goatees. Likely stupid eyes behind gunmetal blue sunglasses that embarrassed the sun’s glare. They milled about, but N refused to be intimidated by their menace.
N was now merely abreast of the Federal Building, squinty as It warped perception across six lanes of potential traffic. The two men fell out of view, being of little interest to N, however, curiosity revived at a remarkable hole in the wall. An alcove that darkened and who’s dimension was deceptive. The Federal Building seemed ashamed of it and an imaginative personification of the concrete’s face shoved this aberration into the lower corner. Without poetics N leaned towards the Federal Building’s gaping asshole and crossed the street without consideration. The defense of ignorance, of unfamiliarity and the armour of his suit protected him from that paranoia that grants velvet rope the power of crowd control.
As he approached the complexity of the orifice grew; it could be sealed shut with fire doors, curiously thrown open. The ceiling of the chamber was much higher than the door pretended and a web of steel piping extended up far beyond what the street saw as the limit. Nothing to see, N thought. Interesting perhaps, but not worth a criminal record. Perhaps just a few feet more and he would. . . .
The doors shut behind him, two grinning troglodytes (and yes the same man-child twins from moments earlier), enraged at some quite invented trespass, closed in on him. There was, of course, nowhere that N could escape to and yet he refused to compromise with these stencils. No better than thugs he said aloud.
They threatened him, not with arrest but with physical violence and barked commands of indeterminable purpose. It would be a fight then . . . .
N kicked the closest man in the kneecap, resulting in a distinctive pop. This threw him off balance in precisely the right direction to spin into the punch that would render the other man unconscious. The first man, now certainly debilitated, had struck his head on the concrete and now supervised a small pool of blood from his brow. He faded into sleep as well.
Panic is not N’s nature. As these aggressors and possible points of authority (though N doubted it) lay in the alley, temporarily disabled, N thought of a way out. He could fiddle thru their rings of keys in the hope that he could find the correct one in the few seconds that they’d be out. A daunting possibility and one that could only lead to failure. The second option took a decade to emerge . . .
N climbed up to the lowest of the network of pipes with a slim prayer to nothing that it would support his weight. From it he moved to another, and another, until he was precariously high above the melee. One, the man he’d punched, began to wake up below and tended to his partner. They would have a great deal of explaining to do, N thought, to their bosses, to doctors, to themselves.
N’s plan had worked in the short term. He was now uncomfortably balanced on two or three pipes with incalculable capacity but, while it was difficult to tell how far up he could climb, this route must certainly have its limits.
He clambered up another five feet, looked down to see the men still sitting. Perhaps they were despondent, or waiting for reinforcement. Up was the answer, N thought, or in. A large vent some 10 feet above him was reachable by a complicated twisting of his torso and tentative grasps to ever shrinking pipes.
At the point of the vent, the pipes were much less frequent. He stood on one that ran horizontal and parallel to the vent’s wall and leaned into the vent itself for additional support. Even in this awkward position N made short work of the screws with a pair of nail clippers and made the requisite nervy maneuvers to displace the vent cover, turn it 45 degrees, push it into the ventilator shaft proper and perform a gymnastic feat to enter himself. Goddamn his age and goddamn his attire, N would not be stymied by the relative possibility of a task.
Within five minutes of struggling N dropped into a poorly lit bathroom and contemplated his next move.
