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«Who _are_ they?»
«I think they're from the Cafй, Mom. Come on, keep going.»
The line of them went on and on and a moment came when I knew I couldn't stand the sight of another child, so I closed my eyes and let Pepsi lead me. But as soon as I did that, the sound of their voices and their pain came from everywhere. They called for their mothers, their fathers, for water. They wanted their brothers, their toys, the pain to stop. Everything is bigger for children, so what must their pain have been like? I kept stumbling, but that did not make me open my eyes again. Blind, my mind magnified the sound of the children's cries, but nothing was worse than actually seeing them. _Nothing_.
«The fog is going away, Mom. I can see way up the path.»
«How much further is there to go?»
«I don't know. There's a hill coming up that we have to take. I think it's the one that leads to the Cafй.»
Stumbling again, I felt the ground begin its move upward. I squeezed Pepsi's hand and he squeezed back.
«Now it's all gone, Mom. Do you want to look?»
«No, I don't want to see the children.»
Their cries increased as the hill grew under my feet. I could feel gravity or whatever pull us backward. How I wanted to obey that pull! Go backward a thousand . . . a million miles until all of this was gone.
The fear and revulsion I had been so proud of conquering returned . I wondered if it was my blood that had begun to hurt everywhere inside me. But that was stupid; I hurt because I knew I was begi
«Damn it! Oh, goddamn it!» I tightened all of my muscles, then relaxed them, hoping that would help. But it didn't.
Pepsi stopped.
«What's the matter? What's wrong?»
No answer. He still didn't move. His hand had gone completely limp in mine; I had to look.
The Cafй Deutschland was still far away up the path, but I recognized it instantly. At first I thought its reality in front of us was what had stopped Pepsi, but that wasn't it.
Excited, but also frightened by our proximity to the infamous building, it took me some time to stop staring at it and to look again at the children. That was why Pepsi had stopped.
None of their heads was bandaged anymore, although their wounds were no less horrendous. What's more, all of the bared faces were the same – Pepsi James. Pepsi without eyes, black-tumored or gouged – or the pale green of the beaten, the jaundiced. All of them were Pepsi, all the hideous possibilities of death and almost-death on that beloved, still-recognizable face.
I was enraged. It was too much. Chili had no right to do this. It was impossible.
«You _bastard_! Come on, Pepsi. It's not real. Run and don't look at them. Take my hand!»
We ran as hard and as fast as we could. There was nothing else to do but run toward the Cafй.
Twenty feet away we slowed and clearly saw what was there.
Mae and I were there. I held her in my arms although we were both dead. Shining steel spikes had been driven through my forehead, my arms, and Mae as I held her. One spike went through my pants at the vagina, two through my legs at the ankles. One went through Mae's temple, on and through my chest. We were recognizable, but the burst puckered flesh made us completely obscene, beyond humanity.
«Not that! No!» I dropped Pepsi's hand and bent to throw up.
When I was empty, I was just able to scratch out, «Use the Bone, Pepsi! For God's sake, Pepsi, get us out of here, please!»
Looking up, I saw him moving away from me toward the door to the Cafй.
«Don't!»
He was there and I couldn't stop him from reaching behind our bodies for the doorknob. A second passed before it swung open, the bodies going with it in a slow heavy arc.
«Look, Mom!»
I couldn't see, but my son was speaking and I went to him. I followed him through the door of the Cafй Deutschland.
On to 90th Street and Third Avenue in New York City! My street, the street where I had lived with Da
«Pepsi, do you know where we are?»
He turned and looked at me, all quiet eyes.
«Near your home, right, Mom?»
«But why?» I grabbed his arm much too tightly. «What's here? How can we be here? What's going on?»
«Because Jack Chili is waiting for us in your house, Mom.»
My heart was so tired. Rubbing my hands against my sides, I wondered how far Rondua could go. How far was a dream allowed to trespass into real life, before it was caught and sent back to its proper place? Could it go haywire and take over everything you knew? Was it permitted to live wherever it wanted? Or had I alone reached a point where laws and distinctions, rules of the game, had disappeared? A point where everything in my mind, in my life, was up for grabs?
Dizzied and numb, I walked down the street with my son. I had no way to judge time, but it felt like midafternoon. The sun was moving toward buildings in the west, a breeze blew that had no freshness in it. Things were silent, no noise or people or signs of life anywhere. That was completely wrong and made me think this was some other 90th Street – a figment of some clever but incomplete imagination. Normally my street buzzed and bustled and honked and couldn't keep still, much less stay quiet for a whole minute. It was a set for a film about to be shot: a postcard picture that looked familiar but then very wrong when you examined it more closely.
Pepsi walked slowly, taking in everything. The expression on his face went from tension to awe, to something I had never seen there before.
«Is this where you buy food, Mom?» It wasn't a question so much as a lament.
«Yes.»
«Are any of these cars yours?»
«No.»
The door to our apartment building was open and we walked in together. Another large mistake – you always, _always_ needed a key to get in.
But a close friendly, _known_ smell in the foyer downstairs said beyond a doubt that this was our home. Da
Da
I moved quickly for the stairs, but Pepsi took my arm and shook his head. «Go slow, Mom. I want to see your house. I want to see everything.»
Graffiti on the wall beside the bashed-in mailboxes said, «You think this is hot? Call Barry for the real thing!» Another hand had written beneath it, «I called, Barry, but you weren't home.»
On the second floor, I saw Eliot's door and wondered where he was in all of this. And Da
At the top of the next flight of stairs, ten feet away from our door, I stopped and bit my lip. I felt the skin on my scalp tighten and move backward on its own. I felt my heart beating all over my body – in both armpits, my throat, behind my knees, in my stomach.
Pepsi came up the last step and moved around me on to the landing. «Are we close? Why did you stop?»
«That's our apartment, the one on the corner.»
He walked to the door and waited for me to come. I touched the doorknob. It was warm, as if someone had just rested their hand there before going in. I gave it a slight push and the door swung open, giving one metallic creak halfway that was as familiar as anything I knew. Everything was familiar, yet everything was so completely, totally wrong.
Three steps through the hallway. There was the blue rug Da