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<font face=""arial"">The first time he entered the apartment he felt like he was diving. It was painted black and shot straight through the building, beginning with a door and terminating in a small window. He became suspicious of the walls once he was deep enough in: they were too friendly, they seemed to hug closer around him once he reached the far end.
Henry, who had brought him, had somehow managed to escape what Sam believed a stretch of door-less hallway. He approached the window alone, ducking into what little light it brought in. It was small enough to begin with--no bigger than a man's hand--but the previous tenant must have deemed it necessary to take it out with wide strokes of the same paint. The parts the brush missed passed needles of sun in, sorry beams, so Sam brought in more by scratching the paint with his fingernails.
"It comes right off." Henry's voice blew in from the right. He appeared standing too close and Sam backed away, dropping his hands into his jean pockets. Henry was a well-dressed, neatly put together person with a badge resting somewhere along the length of his belt. He wore his goatee well for someone trying to hide scars.
"I think you've got a razorblade somewhere," he continued without indicating where, "that should do it. The other windows haven't been touched."
Sam was clean, but not cut of the same sort of material as Henry. For one thing, he wasn't a man; for another, he couldn't summon up a badge to explain his scars. Nor could he pack away his tattoos, put his eye back.
"Who lived here before?" he asked.
"Old repair guy. You can have all of his tools, and some other things he left behind. I've checked it all out so you should be set."
"I think my heart just skipped a beat," murmured Sam behind some sarcasm. Looking back the way he'd walked (dove, dove) in, he finally noticed a door to the right and went for it. Henry watched without following him.
"Bedroom," Sam heard him report just as he opened the door.
The room was aptly titled: it had enough space for a single small bed and, perhaps, for a person to stand and admire it, or consider sleeping in one position. There were windows showing him the street. The walls, though, were crowding each other to take the room. If Sam had a sledgehammer, he would have rounded them all up and thrown a hole through each one; a window for every wall. He liked windows.
A few fresh patches of plaster work spotted the bedroom walls. The same went for the hallway, once Sam crammed himself back into it. He found cigarette butts under his feet, strands of ash from whomever had performed the job. He located an empty can with his foot and crushed it. No other doors remained, but one sharp turn to the left brought him to a sink and tub set he assumed to be his bathroom.
"Is there a kitchen?" Sam tried to coax the sink to bring forth water; it wouldn't. The tub faucet churned and managed to only choke up a few drops. "And tools, you said? I can't believe a repair man lived in this hole..."
"No kitchen, Sam. Give me a break."
"Give me a break." The elf, pounding the faucet.
"Earn it."
Sam muttered something not quite off-color but nearing it.
"First thing I want you to do is fix this place up for yourself. You've got access to whatever is in the stock closet. It isn't much, but I'm sure you can make it work." Henry leaned smiling in the bathroom doorway--rather, it was a way without the door. Sam liked it better as it was, letting light and air travel the rooms: he'd rip the other door out.
"Paint?" he asked, as he lit himself a cigarette.
"Yeah, there's about one can, I think I saw."
"Piss off."
"You can always buy some yourself."
By that time Sam had crawled under the standing sink. He thumped at the exposed pipes he could hear working something through. Air hissed where water ought to be. Wiping his hands, he stopped to think with his body crouched, one eye wandering around in its socket.
The other one, the blue eye, shot a sudden look to the side; it fixed on another patch of plaster. Sam touched it with new understanding.
"Do you mean to tell me--"
"Keep out of trouble," said Henry.
Outlets: all the outlets had been covered over, wires castrated. Sam laughed so hard he had to hold onto the empty pipes; he laughed hard enough to wring the smile right out of Henry's neat face.</font>
<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ June 25, 2006 05:21 PM: Message edited by: Sequence 78 ]</font>
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<font face=""arial"">Sam fell happily into the grace of the Cottonwood landlord. By swinging around a few terms, fixing a few creaks and cracks free of charge, he managed to swindle two weeks out of the man to put his apartment in order. Henry approved: he approved of any means to serve the great end (that end being the termination of his relationship with the elf). Thus, Sam?s work began in earnest to save his own ass, to set that mechanism into a nice spin that would serve up his salvation--or, the best he could buy with good behavior.
He worked by day. He had little choice; the lack of electricity left him to rely on the sun for its lighting services. When it broke into the apartment in the morning he was already awake, waiting for it to make its way around the room. Sam?s windows wore no blinds and never would, not so long as they were his to keep stripped and ready to shine. And the mirrors: the mirrors traded beams back and forth once one got started juggling the sun. He was pleased with the effect. Henry had passed him some candles that remained in their boxes, unused.
Beginning with the first day Sam woke that way; buckled down to the bed along the left side of his body, he had no other option immediately available to him. He waited with his eye wide open and hide worked over with shadow and ink. By the time the bedroom was fully lit, he checked to make sure that the correct percentage of his skin was black (sometimes he swore it was up near the surface, bruising in the places it tried to peek out of his pores). The tattoos were too many to begin with.
At precisely eight o?clock every morning, badge-happy Henry let himself into the apartment with his extra key. He usually brought a cup of coffee, by that time so steeped in caffeine that he felt the need to sing; he wore his suit jackets like he thought they were bulletproof. Sam could hear the man?s walkie-talkie fucking around when the man pulled up outside, floors down, but it was gone by the time he came in. He was smart enough not to wear his cell phone either.
Soon, Henry?d show up squinting in the doorway for all the mirrors and many suns they faced him with--no, he?d lurk and Sam closed his eyes, trying not to inspire anymore smiling.
Henry tried: ?Check, check, one-two.? He waited; he spat a thin stream of coffee at the prone figure on the bed.
?I?m not a mike, unless you want to get a little closer to my di--?
?Too bad: it?s you.?
Sam had yet to get used to the process that was to follow (and he didn?t like waking up that way, so his initial grumpiness was well-earned; he was also an insomniac). It was Henry that unfastened all the metal clamps that pinned him to the bed. There were seven in all: three to each left limb and one to keep his neck in place. In the meantime Henry?s jacket sweated out the smell of all the outside city Sam wasn?t allowed to really see: it made him a sensational flirt to be leaning over and in close physical relations with--meaning he?d scowl.
His muscles made reactions as the man progressed. They remembered their order and function. Five minutes later the contraption (beautifully made) fell from the bed with a slap; Sam wasted no time sliding out from under an invisible weight and raised himself up as if wounded. Sometimes he gave a quick and small seize, but nothing ever happened beyond that--maybe a cough to cover the fact that he was leaning for the coffee cup on the floor. Henry let him steal away with it regardless, to the bathroom, from which he?d return with a cigarette instead and the smile of someone who?d taken a terrific morning piss.
?You?re late.? Sam told him every morning.
?Again,? Henry conceded. He was never late.
He and his badge normally left by nine.</font>
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<font face=""arial"">As he had promised, he finished his work by the time two weeks had rolled over. Sticking to a daily schedule of waking early, working until sunset, and walking until midnight ticked around led to a steady progression of the process. By the end of the run, Sam had earned an apartment that looked more like it welcomed him to live there. He was hesitant to admit that it suited him, because he didn't know what suited him anymore; he didn't pay attention to his tastes apart from what he deemed essential to sustain a functioning level of sanity. His had become a life powered by necessity rather than real pleasure.
Pleasure became: waking up at all, opening all the windows at once, witnessing an irregular pace of life with his view of the community parking lot. He listened to seagulls rant at each other while they concentrated in packs. People crossed the lot, cars came and went to work or to carry errands. He knew exactly when the lot lamps checked on and were crossed off in the morning. Yes, Sam began to assemble a small, working world out of the happenings of just the Cottonwood apartment complex. And for the most part, nobody in it realized he was doing them such a favor; nobody knew him except by the sounds of sanding or the path of smoke that proceeded from his window.
He'd torn the bedroom door out as he'd intended; Sam put it under his bed to wait for a better idea of what to do with it (sawed apart into smaller portions, it might make a nice table). For the little window he found a razorblade and cut it clean, made a nice place to put his face even if it didn't open--he could fix that too. The bed he'd brought with him and there was no other furniture that needed fixing. The tub looked like it could survive the worst kind of suffering imaginable, and probably had; he bleached it and the sink, washed the windows until they let a more accurate portrayal of the world in.
The black walls were thinned out, sanded down, and whitewashed with a homemade brew of rice and lime (and because he forgot most of the recipe, whatever else he thought might clean it up). Henry had been kind enough to lend him a tabletop single burner that ran on propane with which he'd boiled the mess. It made a fair enough gleam once it was dry. Sam felt it didn't clench at him like the black. The mirrors followed, those mirrors mentioned previously: they covered the walls in no important arrangement and only in a small number to start with, because he could only afford a few.
So it was that Sam sat down to a dinner of frozen peas on that last day with plenty satisfaction and very tired hands. Henry paced the place with his terrorizing smile. He inspected the work very thoroughly, but without enough real knowledge of home improvement to fill a single, sturdy opinion. He rapped on the walls. When he came to the toilet, he flushed it (it had worked from the beginning anyway); he drew the start of a bath in the tub to see the water. For some reason he spent five minutes stomping the floors, as if expecting a board to spring up at him.
Henry eventually lowered himself down beside the elf. Instead of offering congratulatory remarks, or asking to be invited to dinner, the man punched him hard and whole-knuckled in the left arm as it began to hop on its own. Sam thanked him.</font>
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Sam called the grandfather clock Good John at the request of a 19th century repairman: someone who'd scratched, "Good John glued you back together, 1887" on an inside wall of the clock and, though Sam could not tell for certain why and what parts this John had put back in order, he knew he'd appreciate the homage paid. Spirits had a way of sticking to their proudest places; he still imagined himself hovering over long-ago jobs he had no business hanging around.
Across his bedroom Good John stood, cherrywood-chested and held at a slant, as if he were hunched to scrutinize his current possessor. He didn't boast any glass, his pendulum was tucked politely out of sight because he was a gentleman, and had been made to keep time and secrets--secrets like John's--in his innards. Sam thought him quite the upright fellow in spite of his lean. One made such accommodations for the elderly.
The elf watched him from his place on the bed, tugging on one of the straps of his nighttime keeper (the harness, if it has not been mentioned, was a work of dependable leather and altered metal--who cares how). He'd fixed himself in a hunch of his own, and for good reason. He was stuck, shut up in the promise he'd made to Anne (and himself) to fix her family clock. He'd not been able to do it and was running up on a week of work.
After four days he'd been able to discover a number of theoretical causes for the clock's silence, including those she'd mentioned, but no resolution; regardless of all his pinching, prodding, and rearranging Good John held his tongue and the time captive. Sam had taken the trouble to seek replacement parts for those he'd deemed missing, in his infinite knowledge of "the way things seem they ought to go," but to no avail. Actually, his gut was usually trustworthy. This time it refused to accept responsibility.
It was beyond him. No, it was beyond his hands.
And the idea was upon him before he'd even had time to turn and regard it. Sam took a jitter down his spine, laughed at the concept even as he was translating it into action: he rose up not from the bed but on the bed, as if the absence of height had prevented him from seeing the answer up high, hiding behind the wings of carved wood on the head of the clock. They of course were not present, and the elf was not looking at the clock at all.
He was staring at his left arm. The depth of his look suggested that it respond somehow for the sake of good manners, and yet it remained exactly as it always was; the tattoos did not unlock nor did they trouble to regard him. Not just yet.
"Ah, you're just upset," he said smilingly of someone, possibly something (if a thing had it in itself to become upset). The elf knocked back a wrap of hair from his sweaty, summer-skinned neck and shook the arm. He hedged his smile down to a smart, simple lift of his lips and: "I think Sequence 26 will about do it. Need some help here."
The tattoos (clustered on his left side, clutching him tightly) reacted and up went the world in a whirl.
<center>------------------</center>
He woke to find himself slumped over on his side, on the bed, covered in debris. Good John had taken it upon himself to erupt, an action not commonly attached to standing clocks, or any clock for that matter. Sam sat up; he saw John's gentlemanly parts strewn about the room--a gear was stuck in his wall menacingly near--and the greater part of him that remained was a quietly burning husk.
"Well that's not fixed," Sam decided.
<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ June 25, 2006 11:40 PM: Message edited by: Sequence 78 ]</font>
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Sam recovered enough original parts from the accidental blast to combine with some new pieces he'd tracked down rummaging in the bins behind workshops, reaching deep into the mysterious shelves of pawn shops, walking the mounds of junkyards and heaps of garbage dumps. Most of this salvage work was performed at night, ducking under the glance of the moon and its sentry stars (and how he enjoyed the freedom of flashing from one point to the next, swift as an electrical current and slim as a well-kept secret).
He wasted an entire week and nearly all the money he'd earned repairing Corym's rented room on the endeavor, too, and probably because he was having so much fun in spite of the failure that compelled it be done. Sam did not enjoy funneling the remainder of the money into shutting his neighbors up about the incident. Once or twice, he did buy himself a slice or bite of something to eat; usually Henry took pity and brought him coffee to keep him alive. The elf lied, claiming he'd been put on a strange task by the manager.
The second week saw him jammed up in his room when he wasn't asked to tend to the normal requests. The newest complaints were all striking the air conditioners and somehow, although he had not installed the window units and had only been working there a few months, Sam was held accountable for any problem associated with them. Such nuisances slowed the completion of his project, whatever the hell it was.
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Finally the drugs loosened up.
Sam lifted his head and it, without trouble, found the top of the holding tank. It thudded, making a dense, expressionless sound. He spent his available energy slurring curses about the slow pain. Spittle hung from his mouth that'd come out in his drugged sleep, and he wiped that away; he didn't realize it was mixed with blood already. His fingers felt like rubber.
"M'thf'ck'n... th'fu..." He spoke jammed-up words like he was huddled in that box.
The drug release had, of course, been following a precise schedule and he was being monitored from across the room by technicians. They'd been waiting for him to wake up for over an hour already. When they saw the jump in heart rate, they gratefully shoved up to their feet and left their newspapers and best-seller paperbacks behind.
"I don't get paid to babysit," one man muttered, eyeing a security camera.
The other of the two men chose to voice his complaint by throwing open the tank hatch without warning: in flooded the light, the air-conditioned cold, the sounds of Sam's own heart pumping out electrical pulses. He also kicked the side of the tank.
"---!" the elf exclaimed, short of voice. He squinted up at the swollen light, the silhouettes leaning over him, and decided he'd like to make a run for it. He only ended up slumped over the lip of the tank opening like he was some sea catch, an octopus or some creature equally stringy and boneless; his arms slapped the metal outside of the tank.
He let out another worthless sound of contempt.
"It's about damn time. Call downstairs." The first man sent the second back to the metal desk while he chummily hauled the thin-bodied elf the rest of the way out of the tank and dropped him onto the floor.
"Shit, he stinks," he remarked.
Meanwhile, Sam swam around in the chill air, croaking more curses, and tried to reach for the machines he felt thrumming very close. Yet he couldn't speak the words, change the sequence, and his left half remained securely locked. The electricity roiled inside of him, beating against those bars and forcing one single, arched writhe out of his body. He gasped, physically extending one arm to stretch the energy and his soul just a little farther--
"Two weeks," he suddenly heard someone say above him. The voice was familiar enough to draw a sneer out of him.
"Wh's..." the elf tried thickly.
"Two weeks, this time. You sure as hell earned it, Sam." Henry smiled descending to a crouch. He patted the hand Sam had been reaching with, and put it back with his body. "That was quite a trick, scrambling up the tracking device. How'd you do it? It was specially designed so you couldn't touch it."
"I...didn't...do...shit." heaved the elf.
"You must've. We couldn't find you for so long, man." (Henry loved calling him "man," it was his lame attempt at irony.) "I figured it had something to do with your friend--and believe me, she's got a load of trouble all her own. I ran a check."
Henry must've thought Sam's silence meant he was considering himself defeated, outwitted, again at the mercy of the law enforcement system. The elf laid there without moving. He did breathe, steadily, and eventually he dabbed the floor with a dimpling cheek.
"I went for a long walk, that's all."
<center>----------------</center>
The elf was returned to his apartment in relatively good condition, considering he'd had his face stepped on for his choice of humor. He remained in a light haze, his surroundings dim and uncertain. Henry stayed with him after he'd been strapped down and shot up with tranquilizer for the night.
He fell into a fitful sleep. The parole officer hummed beside the open window and threw paper planes at his prone body, basking in the summer night.
<font color="#a62a2a"><font size="1">[ July 18, 2006 08:33 PM: Message edited by: Sequence 78 ]</font></font>
<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ July 18, 2006 11:20 PM: Message edited by: Sequence 78 ]</font>
