10/28/1999 Geoff Ashbrook
Jaen and Tap went over to Clairyn's house, to fetch a bimonthly publication. It was a bit brisk and so they put on sweaters and gloves and he felt how cold the doorknob was when he shut the door behind them, and then he ran after her and caught up with her and the two of them ran down the street. A few snow flakes were beginning to fall, and they jumped over the icy white patches of snow that were left in the shadows of hedges. The chimneys from near all of the small houses on the street had wispy columns of smoke, and Jaen wandered how many people were sitting inside there and smoking pipes, and how many of those people were ruminating over this and that bundled into a dry thought and soaked into some realization that they simply must tell someone about. Clairyn's house was not far, only four blocks away, and they arrived there before long.
The two of them always liked Clairyns' place because of the lights out front and the modest fire that always kept the place lip-warm, and too there was often tea to be had for something wet. So the two of them dashed up to the door and knocked and hopped around and watched their breath and then someone answered the door, and it was Clairyn.
She pushed the screen open and smiled and said, "What took you so long?"
"What do you mean, we just ran straight here." Tap said.
Clairyn shrugged and went back into the house, and the two of them followed her in and shut the doors behind them. The house was, as usual, full of animals and their respective sounds. Old people sat in arm chairs reading magazines. Every once in a while a doctor would walk by, or run by. Waiters went from room to room taking orders, and cut into the walls there were little coobies for shops and venders. "What did you say your parents do again?" Jaen asked Clairyn. But, without even turning around Clairyn just sort of snorted a huff of air and lifted her hands up, "I'd be the last to know. Oh look at this," she said, "I just found it the other day."
Then she stopped by a door. "There used to be a bookshelf here, but I was straightening up and check this out." The door was oval shaped and had a big iron wheel in the middle of it. She spun the wheel, the contraption seemed to be in remarkably good shape, and pulled the door open with nothing so much as a squeak. It was all dark inside, and one by one they stepped. There was a clicking sound and a light came on and Jaen saw a pull-string dangling over Clairyn's shoulder.
"It looks like an elevator, sort of," said Tap. And he and Jaen watched as Clairyn traced her finger around a blue-print like map on the wall, all decorated with tiny lights and even tinier numbers.
"I wish I could read this thing," Clairyn said, and she turned to the panel by the door, where had it been an elevator there would have been the buttons for the floors, and she turned a few dials and scrolled out a three digit number on what looked somewhat like a slot machine, and then she pulled a big lever, like in old Voting booths or sort of like the cleaning-lock on dish washers. There was a loud click and the room began to move, though none of them could tell which way they were moving. Then it stopped and a bell sounded that sounded like an old telephone, and Clairyn spun the wheel again and pushed the door open.
They all stepped out into what looked like an old Greek amphitheater. But stranger yet, they were on a hillside; but still yet, when they looked into the air there was no sky, but a ceiling hundreds of feet domed up and half way up the walls were a surface of balconies, like in a shopping mall where the floors of stores can all look down on a fountain or something. Tap turned around and saw that the door they'd come in through was on wheels on a track, like train tracks. He tried to trace the track along the ground to see where they might have come from, but in both directions it snaked off and got lost in the hills. And too in the air in the distance he could see contraptions that looked like their little elevator-train moving up and down through the air, some on cables, others moved by giant cranes. Way up there were clouds hoovering in the air, and try as he might he couldn't figure what the ceiling was made of.
From where they stood everything seemed uniformly lit, though there didn't seem to be anyplace where the light was coming from. The remnants of an aqueduct towered over them to their left, with birds perched all over it, nests visible on the crags, and even trees growing from the top and ledges. "It's a boat." Clairyn said, and smiled.
"A boat? It can't be a boat, it's too big," Tap said. "Besides, how much sense does it make to say your house has a boat inside it. I mean, it might explain why your chimney is round like the smoke stack of an old ocean liner, while the other houses on the street have normal brick or stone chimneys. Or why your fireplace has all those tubes and pipes coming out of it. And it might explain why your house looks a little like a cabin that would be on top of a ship, but ships don't have aqueducts, or creeks." He said, pointing to the bridges and rim-trees a hundred yards ahead of them.
"No," Clairyn said, "Not my house. The town. Our town is built on some kind of boat. Though surely it isn't a normal boat, just look at those azaleas." And she pointed to a spot off to the right, where something like the bricks and mortar of a bank had fallen into ruin, one or two pillars standing Doric half or full, the slope of a roof, the whole jumble of it reclaimed and covered with azaleas and berry vines, with a lady tending a small tea garden on the side.
"I don't get it," Jaen said.
"What don't you get?" asked Clairyn.
"Any of it. What should I be getting? You said this is a boat. A boat in what? I guess I just didn't expect that you'd find something like this in your house."
Clairyn looked at her, but didn't say anything.
"I mean," Jaen went on. "How do they heat this place. I don't get it. I don't think it's real." She turned to Tap, "Do you think this is real?"
"I'm not sure what it would mean to be standing some place that doesn't exist. I think your reading too much into this. You always do that in English class too."
"No I don't."
"Sure you do. Remember when we were reading that story about the family that got lost on the train making their ways across India to visit relatives for the holidays? You kept saying how that represented something else. Everything for you is always indicative of some principle of degenerate psychology. What principle are you standing in now? Would you like some metaphorical food? Something analogical to drink perhaps? I'm getting 'real' hungry myself. Clairyn, do they sell food up there?" and he pointed to the mall-like balconies on the walls.
She knodded, "yeah, but I haven't been able to figure out what currency they use, and they don't accept our money."
"Well," Tap said, "Lets go find out how to make some money so we can get lunch."
"I still don't get it." Jaen said, as they began the trek to the far wall, to where there looked to be something like a switchback escalator that snaked up the levels.
Tap and Jaen took off their sweaters and scarves as they walked. Jaen pulled a small bag of coffee beans out of her pocket and held it up, "Do you think we could trade them these for something?"
Clairyn looked at her, "Where did you get that?" she asked.
"I brought it over for your mom. But I can always get more."