Swanwick, Michael - SS - Walking Out.pdf

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WALKING OUT
Michael Swanwick
Terry Bissel woke up one morning knowing he had to get out of the city.
Take a jitney up Broadway and keep on going forever. Travel so far and so
fast that if someone were to shine a flashlight after him, by the time the
beam caught up it would've dissipated to nothingness. "I don't want to live
here anymore," he said aloud without opening his eyes. It was true. For a
long time he lay motionless, simply savoring the thought. A strange elation
dawned within him. "I want to live in the country."
His wife was in the kitchen, humming to herself. The blender growled
briefly. She was grinding beans for coffee. There was the sizzle of eggs and
ham in the skillet. Kris was a lark. Eight months pregnant, and she still
got up first.
He pulled on his slacks and rolled up the futon. In the doorway, he
paused briefly to watch Kris waft lightly from sink to counter. Then he
said, "Let's move to New England."
Kris stood very still at the counter. She didn't turn around.
"C'mon, babe, you know you hate it here. Too much noise, too many
people, hardly enough room to fucking turn around in. I want to live in
Connecticut—no, Vermont! I want a big, rambling house where you can
see meadows out the kitchen window and woods beyond them. And
mountains! Snow in the winter and fresh apples in the fall. I want the kind
of place where sometimes you get up before dawn to watch the deer
crossing the lawn."
"Terry," Kris said warningly.
Down on the street, the recyclers were rattling the bins of cans and
bottles, slamming bales of paper and bags of digestibles into the various
bellies of their truck. They were in a good mood, to judge by the loud,
yakyakking sound of their voices. "Yo, Nee-C! You still seeing that old fool,
Benjy?" And: "He got better stuff than you do, Maaaalcolm." And: "You
don't know till you try, babe! I got stuff I ain't never used." The crew were
laughing uproariously at this exchange. "I heard that," said the woman.
"Fact is, I heard you ain't had the opportunity to use none of it!"
 
"Listen to that." Terry snorted. "That's exactly the kind of crap I'm
talking about. Hey—you ever seen a moose?"
"No."
"I did once when I was young. My folks took us kids to this little
bed-and-breakfast outside of Montpelier and—hey, the woman that runs it
must be getting pretty old by now. Maybe she'd like to sell. What do you
think? Wanna run a B and B? It couldn't hurt to ask."
Kris whirled abruptly. "We need more coffee," she said in a choked
voice, "We're out."
"I thought I heard the grinder."
"That was . . . decaffeinated. I put it in by accident." With harsh,
choppy motions, she unscrewed the grinder and slammed its contents into
the disposal. "Go across the street, why don't you, and get us some beans?"
"You're the boss." He grabbed up Kris in both arms, lifted her to the
ceiling and whirled her around. "You and the little Creature from the
Black Lagoon." He kissed her belly, set her down, and ducked into the
cubby to throw on robe and slippers. Then he headed out, leaving his wife
weeping behind him.
It was a wonderful morning!
On the elevator, Mrs. Jacinto from two floors up smiled and said hello.
Her husband, Herb, was a municipal gardener, as tall as she was fat, and a
dab hand at cribbage. Terry had played him a few times and the man was
definitely a shark. "How are you doing this lovely morning, Mr. Bissel?"
"Couldn't be better—we're going to move."
"Well, isn't that nice? I expected you children would, now that you have
the little one on the way. Oh, and that reminds me. Tell that pretty wife of
yours I have some morning sickness tea that I'm bringing up later on; I
know you'll think it's foolishness, but tell her to give it a try, it really does
work. Are you moving Downtown?"
"We're leaving the city altogether, Mrs. Jacinto. We're moving to the
country."
The smile froze on her face. "Well," she said. "Well, well."
The doors opened for the ground floor and she skittered away.
 
It was a quick hop-skip-and-jump across the street to The Java Tree.
On the way back, Terry plucked a daisy—perhaps one of Herb's—from the
street turf. He opened the top of the coffee sack and buried the stem in the
beans.
"You'll be going to the Housing Authority today, won't you?" Kris asked
when he got back. She accepted the coffee, filled a glass with water for the
daisy, and put it up on the window sill without comment. Ignoring their
earlier conversation entirely, pretending it had never happened. "Like you
promised?"
Well, getting out was a new idea. It would probably take her a while to
adjust to it. "Why not?" Terry said, playing along. "If we want a bigger
apartment, we'll have to move, right? And if we want to move, one of us is
going to have to go stand in line. That's just the way it is. Doesn't matter
what you want, you've got to stand in line." He winked jauntily.
"I'd go myself," Kris said in a strained voice. "I don't mind. It's just
that—" She looked down at the Creature.
"Hey, hey. I didn't say I wouldn't, did I?"
Tight-lipped, she shook her head.
"Then it's settled." Terry ducked into the bedroom and opened the
closet. Silk jacket, snakeclone shoes. On the way out, he paused in the
doorway. "Hey. What about Maine? Maybe we could find a place outside
of Portland, nice and convenient to your mom, wouldn't that be nice?"
As he left, he heard Kris beginning to cry again. Pregnant women were
emotional. He understood that.
Their flat was in the heart of Midtown, at the foot of one of the giant
condensor stacks that drew current out of the flux and into the power
grid. The building was wrapped around the tower's anchor pier, and even
though the engineers swore it was perfectly shielded from any harmful
radiation, this fact had kept the rents low. No question but a new flat was
going to give them sticker shock. Maybe that was all to the good, though.
When Krissie saw the bottom line, she might well change her mind about
New England. The law gave them a three-month cooling off period; it
would be easy to break the lease.
Kris wanted to move Downtown to be closer to her sister. Maybe he
could talk Robin into moving as well. They could get adjacent farms and
raise llamas.
 
It was another beautiful morning. The Municipal Weather Authority
had programmed a crisp autumnal tang into the air. Light breezes stirred
the little trees on the building tops. They looked just fine outlined against
the dome.
A paper bag blew past Terry's feet and automatically he started after it.
But then a street urchin appeared out of nowhere, a skinny black kid in an
oversized basketball jersey, and snatched it up. He leaped high, tucking in
his knees for a double somersault, and slam-dunked the bag into a
recycling can. With a flourish, he swiped his bank card through the slot to
pick up the credit.
Terry applauded lightly.
"Watches!" the shabby man sang. He was only a step away from being a
beggar. His jacket was shiny and his shoes weren't. One side of his face
was scarred from old radiation burns. That and a blackwork Luna Rangers
tattoo marked him as a vet. The watches flew in great loops and
figure-eights, blinking and goggling whimsically.
"This sort of post-capitalist consumer faddism is only a form of denial,
you know," Terry told him.
"Hah? What're you talking about?"
"Think about it. Your devices consume three times their own weight in
time and labor for their design, manufacture, and—now—sales. But what
do they accomplish? A moment's diversion from the sad fact of existence.
It's a measure of our desperation that we'd devote so much energy in order
to generate a respite, however brief, from our very real problems."
"What are you, some kinda nut? Get out of here!" the vendor said
angrily.
Terry stuck his hands in his pockets. "The truth hurts, eh?"
Without answering, the shabby man called his watches in. They came
swooping down on him, finding safe harbor in his many pockets. He
turned and hobbled away.
"It's called denial!" Terry shouted after him. "Therapists have known
about it for centuries!"
It was rush hour in the subway. The crowds were so thick that people
were constantly losing their hold on the platform grab bars and being
 
jostled up in the air. If it weren't for friendly hands to pull them down,
they'd be in serious trouble.
The peoplemover "Spirit of Leningrad" pulled in. Seats filled up fast,
and there were six or seven people left standing when it left the station. A
teenager in an orange leather jacket studded with video pins sat down
next to Terry, then offered his chair to an old woman. A dozen pop songs
clashed faintly from his pins. The crone smiled at him, sat down, adjusted
her seat.
"I'm moving to New England," Terry told her. "Maybe this month."
She glared at him and turned her chair away.
City dwellers were rude. Terry was used to it. He sighed, and flicked on
his paper.
HOUSING SHORTAGE SHAKES CITY, said the Times. Just another
reason to get out. WORST SITUATION SINCE WAR. There were people, it
seemed, who'd been waiting weeks for a suitable upgrade. Of course the
Times was an opposition paper—it had to put a bad face on everything.
JOBLESS RATE HITS 35%, said the News. The News was an
establishment rag; somewhere in the article would be statistics justifying
the situation. But the way Terry saw it the figures spoke for themselves.
With a third of the working population on sabbatical at any given time,
that meant almost three percent were between jobs, pounding the
pavement, making do with three-quarters normal salary and benefits.
Times were tough.
Terry hit Midtown before the Authority office opened, so he stopped in
a diner for brunch. It was a Polynesian joint with thatched roofs over the
tables and white sand covering the floor. He ordered the
papaya-breadfruit surprise and two eggs that had never been inside a
chicken. He didn't bother with the orange juice. It never tasted like the
stuff he used to drink when he was a kid. The way he figured it, if they
didn't have it down by now, they never would. You simply couldn't get
oranges like they had back then anymore.
He picked at his food, thinking about Krissie. Pregnancy was tough.
Kris had less than a year's leave for it. And the neighborhood maternity
center—well, he guessed it was okay. Just last night the nurse-midwife had
come by for the weekly and she'd said Krissie was doing fine. Still, you
couldn't help but worry.
What kind of a place was this to bring up a kid in, anyway? Children
needed to run wild, enough room so they could stretch out and grow,
woods they could disappear into for hours and days at a time.
 

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