The Altonevers (57 page)

“
Fine,” she sighs as
sarcastically as she can , “where is it?”

“
I don’t know,” Anna says
realizing that she'd come from there but had never had to go back,
that she isn't really sure where she's going. It was the only place
she knew existed, that she knew she existed in, and she can hardly
even remember any details of her own home.

“
How can you not know where
you’re going if you’re going there?” the clerk snaps.

“
I’ve never had to go there
before,” Anna answers.

“
How’d ya get here?” the
clerks says.

“
Uh, I…” Anna
stammers.

“
Jeez lady, get it
together,” the clerks says still filing her nails.

“
It’s an earthy one,” he
says.

“
That’s something. But
which one, there are, is, as you know, an infinite number of an
infinite number. So, anything else to narrow the list down from
that would be helpful to say the least,” the clerk says popping her
gum to accent her condescension.

“
The one, what was it? the
one that had a collapse awhile back,” he says.

“
C’mon guy, ya gotta give
me something useful, there are a trillion of those at
least.”

“
That convulsed to its own
destruction,” he says.

“
And…” the clerk says
yawning.

“
The one where I went
missing,” Anna says, losing her patience with the uncaring clerk,
who pops her gum, and takes places and misplaces hundreds of plugs
from the switchboard in front of her, then presses an incalculable
number of keys in a matter of seconds.

“
Leaves in nearly a
minute’s time. Okay, ready?” the clerk briskly asks as Cider
clenches Anna’s hand like his life depends on it. The clerk perks
up and pops her gum as she politely places the last plug into a
port, instantly pulling the two off their feet and into a winding
path resembling an invisible tube that's twisting and turning
through the air and ether. Traveling so fast they can see the
frequency of light moving as slowly as molasses and hear none of
their lung emptying shouts. Though still taking almost a minute to
pop into sudden stillness under the silvery arch of their proper
doorway. Both with toes teetering on the edge of the platform,
thousands of feet above the ground they were standing on almost a
minute ago.

Goodbye or
hello

Anna is taking one last slow sweeping
eyefull of the center of Central’s timelessly scaled grand station.
A last glance of the particle people and peoples, different beings,
hailing from more Alto’s then she could ever know or see, even if
she lived to the end of an eternity. Each person on their own
paths, walking up and down walls and pillars and flying and running
through the air in all directions at once. Her eyes are breathing
in every detail of the scene, every aspect of the colors, shapes
and textures they can grasp of the entire spectra of resonance
rendered to visibility. Until her pupils are dry and stinging red,
glazed with tears of joy to have lived, to have perceived the
experiences of the path she's been on, with him. Not realizing
she's been holding her breath for nearly a minute before
remembering how to breath and gasps for air. She gulps, stepping
back when realizing she's on a ledge thousands of feet above the
ground level, bumping into him, who yelps in pain.

“
Sorry” he says, holding
her tightly as he can.

“
For what?”

“
That it has to be this
way. We should be on our way before the doors close.”

“
You’re gonna come with
me!” she shouts jumping with excitement.

“
Only to your stop. I read
the map, it’s only a few down the line,” he says.

“
Oh, alright, thanks,” she
says, only now knowing what he means to her sense of being, of
being alive, and living a vibrant life as long as she’s with him.
The misfortune of the chance of his path and hers, and him not
wanting to bear the burden of her death on his conscience, knowing
he outlive her by an eternity is inevitable. Even with constant
travel through the Altonevers, she'll grow old, out of her prime to
be eventually killed or captured, and he won’t. He’ll be left with
a withering soul, alone again, dying on the inside in knowing she
died to share her life with him, that he will be broken, alone for
all eternity.

The disheveled two sit side
by side in the middle of the train cars long light blue bench.
Silent, with slips of sobs and sniffles, he and she weep in the
other’s arms. She stares at the red, white and purple speckles
starting to appear on the train floor, connecting the dots and
seeing simple and elaborate shapes of them. A sign that her stop is
coming up, as the train is beginning to assume the detail of her
Alto’s standard. She squeezes him as tightly as she muster, only
when he yelps in agony does she let go. They share a last taste of
the others, their lover’s lips. Embracing only soul erupting
emotion, unbound by thought in this last instance they'll feel the
others presence exciting their own passion for living a vibrant
existence. The simple expression of touching lips is like sipping
from the fountains of gods, alleviating her of mortal cares, or
question of what persists out of substance, existing in what is
felt but un-provable as the only reality she can ever really know
as real. She's free from logic or reason, and freed of freewill
that she feels in this moment of freedom from thought or thinking.
Knowing the soul enrapturing sensation of being inextricably
tethered by the path forged and traveled while they were side by
side, will endure in every sense of her being as long as she
persists. She turns away and steps to the open door, pausing in
place just before passing through it
.

“
Maybe we’ll meet again, on
some street or dive in another time or place of whatever Alto,” he
says.

“
Hopefully, but what’re the
odds of that, would you bet on it?” she says.

“
I would bet on it. I would
have to,” he says.

“
Maybe the fortune of the
infinite energies will favor what we have enough to let us see each
other again,” she says teasing his philosophy of losing casino
chips, and taking the thought from his head. The two stand in a
moment of vacuous silence stretching for what feels like a century.
She takes one step and stops, hesitating, gulping down a lump from
her throat before she can take another breath, and he watches her
stagger away with her head down, defeated. Telling himself over and
over, the only way she can be safe is to be safe from him. She
turns and waves weeping with snot filling her nose and tears
streaking down her peach stained cheeks, as the door chime rings
and the doors slide closed with a mechanical clunk.

She watches as he slides out of view,
and runs along the train to keep her smiling face on his as long a
she can. He waves and smiles in seeing the last glimpse of her
face, one that will be burned into the back of his eyes for as long
as he exists. The train slides into the black of the tunnel,
leaving her alone at the end of an empty, ordinary subway platform
of Grand Central station. Listening to the last of the train
carrying him an infinite number of Alto’s away from her, screeching
against the tracks and echoing through the tunnel as he fades from
her existence. She stumbles across the platform and up a flight of
stairs, familiar to her again, known from her life before ever
knowing the of Altos, before meeting him and traveling them for
what feels like lifetimes lived.

She spills through with the morning
rush, carried by their currents through wooden doors to the buzzing
eight a.m. sidewalk of east forty second street. She walks out from
under the park avenue overpass toward a breakfast cart, stopping to
check her pockets for money to get a bite. Finding she has none
just as a drop of water falls from the overpass onto the left side
of her head. She looks up seeing the face of the moon plainly
visible in the dawn painted sky of the west. The sun is rising
radiance from the east, casting long shadows down the length of the
inanimate, ordinary asphalt streets and cement paved sidewalks. She
sees the statue of Mercury high above her, with his feet on the
clock of Grand Central Station, holding a scepter and crowned with
a winged helmet.

Anna shoegazes slowly along
the edge of the curb with toes teetering inches over the sun bathed
street. Disheveled, in filthy clothes and sweat and tears dried in
layers coating her despondent face. She drifts along then stops
standing paused in place for nearly a minute of squinting toward
the slowly emerging sunrise with her hand over one eye like a
sailor searching for the sight of safe shores. Seeming as though
she’s waiting to cross the street, though at the moment there's no
cars moving. The traffic light is red, and she isn’t standing at a
crosswalk. She breaks into a burst of untamed laughter, disturbing
the clean shaven and coffee fisted passersby.
She reaches into her hoodie pocket, unwraps the chrome pistol
from her tattered pink scarf and lifts her foot to take a step onto
the blacktop.

“
Don't walk!” shouts a man
who blows a whistle. Drawing clusters of curious faces from the
morning’s crowd to himself, then to Anna aiming the muzzle just
above her right ear. She turns to meet the man with beaming brown
eyes brimming with glee. Tears blur her vision when she blinks in
seeing the man isn’t him. She squints to the sun for a second, a
second later with a mechanical click and a Pop! her carrot colored
head burst red and she sees no more. Her body falls as dead weight
to the dawn painted street, laying with the soles of her shoes an
inch from the edge of the curb.