Safety in Numbers

Winter sucks. People who say that they like the cold really mean that they like entering in from it. What they like includes shelter, wool sweaters, and hot chocolate, or cider with tight spiral tubes of cinnamon bark. If you're frozen out, you'll never say that you love winter. Danielle enters the party. Come on in and you don't want to wear your coat all the time, but don't want to risk losing it, and don't want to stash it someplace unless you know most people there pretty well. This may not be one of those times. She doesn't know if she knows anyone there, was just given the address by Bill at the diner counter that morning, coffee and a piece of pie. She carried a ball point in the pocket of her dad's old fatigue jacket, except that she tore off the name 'FAYETTE.' Why tell the world who you are? Why let yourself be identified? The pen spat blue spots on her middle finger. It was still stained.

"It'll be good." Bill had told her. "Abdul's going to show some shorts. Pigbelly's playing. It's a rent party, so it will be five bucks." She'd nodded, written the address in the margin of an abandoned newspaper, and stuck the scrap in her pocket. Another randomly assigned destination, as long as you have some where to arrive to.

And here she is. Danielle can leave town for any interval, run into someone like Mulholland, get an invitation, find the place after blocks of watery sleet, and climb up the stairs and open the door to see - that freak. The one that she and Lyla had always joked about, "Ubiquitous Pete." Some happy little guy, a full five foot three, including his dreadlocks, oversized raincoat in all weather making him look like either an albino Rastafarian midget flasher or a malevolent hobo child. Not that she knows Pete at all, well enough to say 'hello' to. He seems like a fixture. It's just not a party without Pete. Maybe he rents himself out. "We need some authentic bohemian marginality - let's get the dwarf with the weird hair." Danielle steps further into the room, dark, smoke, noise, white light instead of pink this time, melting puddles of slush into the spilled beer, and can see that Pete's dressed up for the occasion: his hair is laced with different-colored garbage-bag twisty-ties, a rainbow of snakes' tongues, stiffened. She turns around again. Adele is also bejeweled: she wears an air-freshener around her neck - a sylvan glade, covered with snow, with a buck. She nods hello to Adele and turns to scrutinize her reflection in the mirror. Shocks of hair stick out, and borrowed mascara bleeds down her cheeks. Dani mutters a curse to herself, cleaning beneath her eyes with the knuckle of her right hand.

"Die! Die! Die!" Howls Girl Millions of Pigbelly, undulating against the chrome post of the microphone. Then she launches into their next number: "This goes out to the one I hate. Just stay home and masturbate." Nothing like a show tune. Sing, sing a song. The woman on stage wails and thrashes, whipping long magenta braids woven with silk daisies through the air. The guitarist flops to the planks and begins to consummate his relationship with his axe. Squares of amber cellophane are taped over the stage lights, piddling yellow pools onto the performers. Danielle steps into line at the keg, red plastic cups wedged between the metal barrel and the vat itself. Waits and Bill pumps her a glass. She holds her cup diagonally beneath the stream to keep the foam to a minimum. No big heads here, no no no.

"You paid, right?" Bill asks her.

Danielle does her best to look affronted. "Of course."

"Did they stamp you?" He asks, but she's already backing away. Stamp, stump, stomp. Danielle does not need to subsidize this loft. She's just here for the free beer and the place to go. And the distraction. And the noise. And the company. She holds her parka tighter around and backs into Adele.

"Hey," Danielle asks. "How are you?" The question is pretty much mouthed in the echoing din. Adele shrugs, so Danielle tries a variant. "How's Jed?" Adele raises her shoulders and smiles, this time. It's too loud to talk, so Danielle wanders off back from the stage, past keg to kitchen. A circle stands passing a joint, so she elbows her way in. Seven already there, she'll be lucky if she gets a couple of hits. The twisted weed comes her way and she can see that it has stars and stripes paper. As she draws, she counts the faces to see who she knows, who she can acknowledge, or possibly even thank. At this point, everyone looks vaguely familiar. The entire town causes her to pause if she accidentally catches an eye. She's either seen them at a show, a party, a bar, someplace she's worked, perhaps someplace that they were working. She doesn't know. Time to go around the circle. She nods in gratitude to who she assumes is the originator of the dope, Girl Millions' boy, Royal.

"Look who's here." He grins. "Our movie star." Danielle smirks in return, but a tape echoes in the back of her mind. Hey who's that movie star hey what's a white girl doing out here. She doesn't know what Royal knows, but assumes that he's just joking about the modeling that she's done for Abdul.

"Do we get movies tonight?" Danielle asks.

"Why, yes." Royal replies. "Abdul's new stuff. And Rich will be the DJ. In fact, here they are now." He nods to the front of the space, the stage now cleared of Pigbelly's clamor, a scrim pulled down before the drum kit. A projector whirs and a big white blur becomes more distinct. A crunching amplified motor noise shakes the space. The image on the screen slips into focus long enough that she can identify it as a big albino bunny, hanging upside down by its feet. Its eyes roll back, glistening hot pink marbles, as it bucks and writhes against gravity, twitching with the proportionally massive strength of its hindquarters. In the same instant that she classifies the previously fuzzy blank blob as 'rabbit' the pale mass swings and explodes, white blooming into red. Apparently Abdul shot it: the first vignette in the documentary. She's glad that Rich is DJing instead of a recorded tape of rabbit screams. Danielle has heard the high pure keening squeals of animals to slaughter, and it is not her idea of a soundtrack.

"Cool, huh?" Royal says and swigs his draft. Danielle shrugs and nods. The air has an edge, something vibrating like a tuning fork held to some diabolical toy - maybe a slinky made of barbed wire. Fun, but not good for you. She sees Adele in a knot with a couple of other guests and strolls over. Maybe they have candy. Capsules make the rounds and Danielle extends a hand and raises her eyebrows at Adele as she takes it.

"Ecstasy." Adele mouths around the mechanized thump and thud dumping from the speakers on either side. All the cohorts look adorable, already. The jagged edge in the air goes to sweet static and she gets a rictus grin.

"So, who are you guys?" Her heart floweth over, already. It doesn't matter, because she already knows them, she knows everyone, just is chock full and brimming of brotherly love. Yeah, right. She usually tries to stay away from this shit. Drains your spinal fluid. And a spine is a terrible thing to waste. The spine is the backbone is connected to the neckbone and the neckbone's connected to the headbone and the head bone is correctly known as the cranium and Danielle knows that if she went and looked in the mirror in the bathroom she could see her skull lit up like a lightbulb. Hr brain bucket glows like a crystal ball with a benevolent future foretold for everyone in the room. God bless us, each and every one.

"Ethan," says a short, fat guy in a leopard print fur tank top, stuffing a doughnut in his face.

"Tandy," says the next, over six foot of carrot-topped lankiness unfurled in a cursive that says "trouble." Her glued-on grin gets bigger. Her capillaries carry two hundred and twenty volts, or something, an elusive eccentric amperage, but everyone else understands, and that's good. She nods and says her name.

"What?" says the guy to her right.

"Danielle." She squeaks, and her name strikes her as inexplicably hilarious, so she giggles.

"Quigley," he responds. She knows that she isn't going to remember them, but who knows, they may become relevant. His name is likewise amusing, and she laughs again. Danielle turns her head to see the picture on the screen. Apparently Abdul found a bunch of lobsters somewhere and chose to boil them, claws extending from a bubbling mass of steam. Orange plier hands flail from the writhing crustaceans. "Hello! Hello!" She is tempted to call and wave in response at the lashing creatures, their antennae flickering, their eyes like sulfur matchstick tips. Danielle is overwhelmed with a cosmic gratitude for seafood, all that sweetness in armor.

"So," says Adele, and Danielle moves her head up and down in vigorous encouragement. "Let's go up on the roof."

"Why, yes, let's," she replies.

"Up to the roof?" Tandy asks.

"The roof!" Shouts Danielle, pointing a finger in the air at the exposed beams of the loft.

"Cool." Ethan concurs, wiping the remnants of a creamhorn from either corner of his mouth. Quigley nods and leads the charge to the back of the space, and a ladder unfolds down from a hatch leading to the square of black above them. Tromp, tromp, go the troopers. The hem of Adele's coat brushes her face as she steps up behind. It's a parade. Tandy's the drum major. She wonders about his baton. They emerge into the cold and dark.

"Yes," says Adele, fist on either hip with authority, pillbox askew on her head. "We are in the right place."

Danielle can only smile and nod, wishing that she had a wired U.S. flag to plant on the tarpaper. One small step for humanity, one giant leap for mankind, or something like that. She waves a hand in front of her face and gets orange trails, the color of TANG, everything up here is for astronauts. They're the new frontier. They've claimed the roof. The whining chunks of noise called music float up after them out of the hole. She surveys the scene. The bright boxes of the city skyline loom to the south. Could they claim those roofs, those towers, or are those solely the province of the men in suits? The closest that she'd ever come would be the corporate kitchens, or as a window cleaner. She pictures herself scraping the glass with a squeegee suspended in some swinging harness and giggles, but this time with terror. "Today the roof, tomorrow the world!" Danielle exclaims, but no-one says anything.

"Today!" She wants to explain to everyone that they own all the roofs, that they could commandeer all the tops each house and high rise on every city block, for themselves, the freak nation, but can't. Tandy laughs, so he must understand. Quigley begins to pace the parameter: good man, guarding the edges of their new territory. All he needs is a bayonet and he's on patrol. But who watches the watchmen? That must be her job. She turns to see that Pete the dwarf and Jed have followed behind. Adele sits on an upturned five-gallon bucket and lights a cigarette. The ember's 'O' glows in the black. One of the boys starts singing some song, and Danielle swings her arms back and forth.

"Why are you here?" Ethan asks her, suddenly turned inquisitor. His hands cross his chest and then his palms beat his soft upper arms, causing a band of smiley-face tattoos to grimace.

"For the party." Danielle wants to give him a certificate in mastery of the obvious, unroll a square of parchment from her back pocket and present it to him. Either that, or produce an official license, the mandatory identification. 'GUEST' it would read, with a picture of her, and maybe another shot in profile, with a number, and a barcode. 'VISITOR' it would say, and if anyone ever displayed such temerity as Ethan, she could produce her I.D. as vindication for existence.

"No." Ethan knit his brow and shook his head. "I mean, who do you know?"

"Um." She scans her files. Who is she supposed to know? Is this a test? "Well, Bill told me about it, and I know Girl Millions, and Royal, and Adele and Jed." She feels oddly encouraged by the extent of her acquaintance. "And now I know you and Quigley and Tandy and do you want me to walk in there with an el marko and start writing everyone's name on them?" The thing appeared to be actually thinking about it. "Is that what you want?" It was her turn to cross-examine. "What do you want?"

"He wants you to leave him alone." Tandy said. "You greedy greeny grabber." Now he chortled. "And you don't know me."

"So tell me a little about yourself." Adele and Jed sat side by side, watching the rest as if they were a tableau. Ubiquitous Pete semi-pogoed, barely hopping up and down in place. A billboard behind him advertised a Latino TV station, presenting the equation of apple pie plus custard flan. Who is this Tandy? What does he do? Would he do her? Can't tell the players without a program, she swears. "Tell me about the condition of being Tandy." One of the buildings on the horizon has an illuminated cylindrical dome like a cake. Her skin's on fire and she wants to laugh and scream and cry all at once. He shakes his head. "Well, why not?"

"That's for me to know…"

"And for me to find out. And that's why I'm asking you, then."

"Asking me what?" He grins as diabolically as she only wishes she could.

"Asking you to describe your particular condition."

"Whatever."

"Is there anything particular to it?"

"To what?"

"Your condition."

"You're nuts."

"That, Tandy, is most probably beyond dispute, so it is not for me to know and for you to find out, rather, it is a matter of common knowledge. Public record. The topic up for discussion is why you are here."

"No, it's why you are here. That's what Quigley asked you."

"Quigley didn't ask me, Ethan did."

"You know what I meant."

"What do you mean?" Damn, she was not making a good impression. "What would you like to know?"

"I would like to know who the hell you think you are?"

"Tandy, you've hurt my feelings. I'm a close personal friend of everyone in the room."

"We're not in the room, we're on the roof."

"Well, on the roof, then."

"You are?"

"I most certainly am." She nods once for emphasis.

"Boring!" Ethan announces, standing with his boots splayed and swinging his bare arms from side to side.

"Well, then you entertain us." Danielle wishes that Adele and Jed would start singing, that there'd be a spontaneous fireworks display, a terrorist's bomb, some instant distraction for focus. What would they sing? The best song of their's that she remembered involved what, how did it go? "McGilla Gorilla and Phyllis Diller having lunch with a serial killer. Talking about her pretty blue scar(f). Talking about the pain in her heart. And I pray to die."

"Boring!" Ethan says again.

"Only the boring are bored," she refutes. "Make something happen." Danielle hears glass breaking in the alleyway. This is too much conversation, really, all she wants is to feel the thrumming buzz of her limbs. That, and maybe find someone to touch her. She is all discrete particles, barely restrained. The least contact will bring a type of annihilation, or oblivion. If she's lucky. "Dance!" She stands up and throws out her hands, then strolls to the edge, letting her fingers trail behind as if on the surface of water. "Let's move!" The noise from the open hatch indicates that the band is back on stage, if not Pigbelly, another. Maybe Wombripper. Jed and Adele stand up and start waltzing. One-two-three, one-two-three. Quigley spins in a circle. Danielle begins to march along the edge. Her knees are happy rubber. Tandy stands stock still. "Sir!" Danielle asks. "Won't you join us?" He just smiles. The wind picks up. Danielle wonders if the towers downtown feel like shattering as much as she does, if the wind will pick them apart like so many mirrored tiles and toss them out over the lake to float on the surface like bits of tinfoil confetti and then sink. She looks over the edge, and sees the even dents of the brick wall, some dumpsters, the skeleton of a metal fire escape strung down the side of the building to the east. The wind skids a piece of cardboard and a sheet of newspaper gets blown to stick to it. "Why not?" She thinks to herself, trying to do the 'twist' solo, despite the chill. "Why won't he dance?" Then Danielle steps back from the edge and twists seriously, elbows out, hands in front of her in clenched fists, teeth biting through one another. Twist and shout, yes, and they'll work it all out.

Danielle hears a shout behind her and opens her eyes to discover that the space where Tandy stood is empty. Adele and Jed steer toward the void once occupied, cheek to cheek, eyes closed, interlocked fingers on clasped hands before them. Quigley stands to one side. Ethan almost knocks her over, striding to the edge where the shout still echoes.

It's too cold. They should go inside.

Danielle looks over Ethan's shoulder down to the pavement, and sees that Tandy looks like he's dancing now, in silhouette, an international figure for movement and rhythm now broken and splayed. There's no way he's alive with his head at that angle. A rat runs over his ankle.

"Oh, shit," says Jed, and then, "Oh, my God."

Adele's screaming down the ladder. "Call an ambulance! Call an ambulance! Someone fell off the roof!"

Danielle wonders if anyone can hear Adele and has an impulse to correct her. "Nobody saw," she murmurs. They don't know if Tandy fell, or slipped, or threw himself, or made a swan dive, or took two steps back, and then again, and executed a grand jete worthy of Baryshnikov or Nijinsky off the edge of the roof. Just as dead, either way. At least he didn't slip on a banana peel. She glanced at the rooftop to make certain that he didn't. Or would the wind have blown the skin away?

"Oh, my God. Oh, my God." Ethan repeats. "Is he alright?" Danielle laughs. "Go and look." The man directs. She clamps down on her laughter and skids to the hatchway, almost stepping on Jed's knuckles climbing down the ladder. Time in emergencies becomes fragmented: every movement exaggerated; every statement, an excerpt from a melodrama delivered by white-painted actors with black-lined eyes, backs of palms flopped across their foreheads; every image is a still from an originally silent movie, badly dubbed. They fall into the kitchen. Jed runs to the phone. Danielle runs to the bathroom.

They've glued gray rubber sharks on the walls. She's shaking and wants to take a shower. She doesn't know what any of it means, if it was an accident, or if he decided that he had to jump, or if he always knew all along. Maybe he survived. Maybe it wasn't too late to ask. Hey, stranger. She didn't know the guy, but there was a certain temptation to stroll out to the sidewalk, gather up a handful of trenchcoat collar and slap him around a couple times, bellowing, "What the hell were you thinking?" But she knew what he was thinking, she thought it herself every time that she stood near an edge. "Gravity won't catch me," she thought. "Or maybe it will, and it will just pull me down, like everything else on earth." This version possessed a certain blunt efficiency. You become a dot on the pavement. Period. The end. No more responsibility for your car wreck of a life, that atrocity exhibition that is too banal to sell tickets to, let alone the indulgent wishful thinking that anyone would actually ever seriously pay to take a peek. Look at the mess you've made. And you won't even have to clean it up.

The bathroom's a mess. There's mildew all over the shower stall. The plastic predators swim around a cracked mirror over the sink, a battered porcelain square basin crusted with toothpaste spit. Who lives here, anyway? Time to call housekeeping.

This is simply unacceptable. She may have to clean things up herself.

Danielle emerges to discover a stampede, slow-moving and respectfully quiet, of people for the door. No one wants to be there when the cops come, the ambulance, whatever. She joins the throng, jostles down the stairs, last one out is a rotten egg. The crate of the van for what remains of Tandy has arrived. But they can't put Humpty Dumpty Tandy back together again. The sleet begins to leak into a crack in her boots. It would be nice if there was a way to make things warmer, to clean things up. And there is. And they wouldn't even have to take the body away. They could make the place a pyre, burn down the building, an in memoriam to the dance, to the music that had definitely stopped playing. She turns to explain her inspiration to Jed, but he isn't there. Her hands fumble for the lighter in her pocket.

"What?" a random young Asian women says. She wears her hair in five knots across the top of her head and has chrome hoops in her eyebrows and nostrils. "What happened? Why did they throw everybody out?" The ambulance's siren is off, but a radio crackles from within and red boxes across its top cast stained light on a bank of slush.

"I don't know." Danielle shrugs and buries her naked knuckles deeper in her coat pockets. "I don't know anyone here." She turns to leave, and almost trips over the dwarf, Pete. A sudden gust rearranges his braids, and a blue garbage bag twist-tie whips to flick beneath her eye.

- Erika Mikkalo