Chapter 12 Faye
The elevator that brought Ronald downstairs dinged when it took him away. The bones of that machine were so old that it wasn't impossible to think it would break down right then and strand him there with the others, but no, Ronald locked the security gate and left them to their night.
He's going to find a reason to come look under this table, Faye thought, holding her breath the entire time he was downstairs, and when he left she released the breath in one long whoosh. There was only one room in the lock-up area, a small outcropping where materials for the upcoming exhibitions were taken for preparation, and she'd chosen it as her hiding place before realizing Umu and Ro were already there. They laughed when the elevator dinged with Ronald's departure, and Faye laughed, too. She was a new person.
Not too new a person because she stopped laughing when she heard a noise from somewhere else in the vast basement. She clutched her knees underneath that table, but no, it was one of the others, emerging from hiding, relieved as she had been that they'd made it down. In the exhibition room, Ro popped to his feet first and Faye followed, more slowly. I wonder if he's ever been afraid of anything, she thought.
Faye made eye contact with Umu and smiled at her, just as WebMD advised. They'd met before, Umu and Faye, though she doubted if Umu remembered. Faye had been sitting at one of the picnic benches behind the administration building when Umu had approached her, big smile, familiar wave, talking about something to do with roller skates. When had that been—at the beginning of this school year or the last? Faye couldn't remember.
She'd walked right up to the table and rested her hand on it like she owned the whole campus, speaking quickly and confidently about the political science course they were both taking to fulfill a requirement and the longtime role of roller skating in Black social movements. "It's demonstrative, and political," Umu had said, tapping her red-tipped fingernails on the table. "But it's also just a roller skating party, you know?"
Umu kept talking while she took Faye's number and sent her a message with the whens and wheres, and then she'd turned and waved and yelled over her shoulder how excited she was to see Faye there, but her attention was already on the next picnic bench, the next set of students she wasn't at all afraid to speak to. Faye couldn't be sure, but she suspected that the message with the details was still unread, buried deep below the two-factor authentication texts that had rolled in during the intervening months. What did someone wear to a roller skating party? How did they behave? Were you supposed to show up right at the start time or filter in later? Did you arrive in your roller skates? And more than that, was this even a real invitation? Was it pity? Was she being mistaken for someone else? Or worst of all, was this some joke that she was to be the butt of? The number of variables had made Faye's head spin. Not for a second had she considered attending.
Without instruction, Faye and Umu and Ro and then the others gathered toward the back of the basement, where the books marked "B" were shelved. Books with no connection to one another besides the fact that they were between 10 and 12 inches tall. Like this strange scattering of people, together down in the library by chance more than anything else. They formed a sort of armor on the shelves, the books in the B section. Shelved precisely so there wasn't any shelf space wasted, every single one of the rolling shelves held thousands of pounds of books.
Mary was one of the first to get to the stacks, and she began turning the crank to move the first of the shelves on its set of rails so that the space between B2 and B3 disappeared.
They needed some floor space for the ritual, and where better than here among the books? Needing to feel useful, Faye took herself to the other end of the bay of shelves to turn that big metal crank. It wasn't easy work. This area of the stacks was at least sixty years old and whatever the weight limit of the shelves was, they were over it. If she turned the crank too quickly, the shelf swayed, threatened to tip, so they were slow and methodical and quiet, but eventually they parted the sea of ten- to twelve-inch books so to the right and to the left, the shelves were collapsed against each other and there was a big open space in the center that would be their arena.
Only Ro didn't offer any help. He didn't work there, and as far as Faye knew, he didn't go to school there, had no attachment to the place. As soon as the first bit of floor space opened up, he sat on the concrete and watched the others work. Soraya was the next one to sit down, on the floor near Ro, but not too near him. He was leaning back on his hands like he was getting some sun, taking up space the way men do, but her posture was more cautious, cross-legged and precise.
"It's not contagious," Ro said. There was at least a yardstick between them. Faye kept at the work of moving the stacks—she liked to feel useful—but she listened as Ro spoke.
"What isn't contagious?" Soraya said.
"I'm Ro," he said. "I brought the drugs you'll be enjoying. And you can sit closer. You can't catch poor from me; my rash is all cleared up."
"Ro's going to get ahead in life based on his charm," Umu said. She came over and sat on the floor in the space between them. "Soraya, this is my friend Ro; he's a bit of a dick. Ro, this is Soraya; she's Kip's girlfriend."
"But not a human being in her own right?" Ro said.
"See?" Umu said to Soraya. "Charming."
Faye had been reading the story on which tonight's ritual was based. In it, Demeter causes a plague of sterility that would have starved the whole world until she got her way. Only once she was satisfied did she make the world heavy with fruit and leaves and flowers.
Demeter, Faye would have bet, would have sat on the floor and made someone move those rolling shelves for her.
"What is this backpack?" Davey said, holding a green canvas thing by the strap. To Faye's eye, he was delighting in a sense of authority, like he'd been waiting all day to begin giving directions.
Kip had been leaning against the nearest stack. There was no risk of moving it or toppling it since it was pushed back as far as it would go. Faye didn't know him well, but even to her, he seemed quiet during the setup. Only now, he made himself heard.
"Poppies," he said.
Umu and Ro and Soraya and Faye and Mary and Davey stopped what they were doing, stopped their side conversations, to look at him. There was a peculiar nature to his voice. Like the gods were already speaking through him. A blankness to his eyes, too, as he snatched the backpack from Davey, his movements graceless, and lifted the flap to reveal not a poppy, but an ear of corn.
"For the goddess," he said.
Complaining that someone else had brought supplies, that someone else was trying to help, that wasn't the move, that wasn't the way to court influence over the others. But Davey had a more basic argument.
"When did you bring that backpack down here?"
Those vacant eyes, that leathery voice. If there was a god speaking through Kip, it made a quick exit and he was just Kip again.
"When I came in to start working this morning. Before I went to the reading room."
"Did Soraya let you down?"
Soraya and her crossed legs and perfect posture said nothing. She hadn't let him down. Readers weren't allowed backpacks in the library, and even if he spent a lot of time in the place, Kip was just a reader. It was her last day, and she was about to do drugs and hang out in the library all night, but on the clock, Soraya respected rules.
"My family pays to repair the elevator I rode to come down here this morning," Kip said. He let his backpack fall to the floor but the ear of corn, he held on to. "I think it's safe to say I'm not going to walk out with a backpack full of books." Then he took the ear of corn and tossed it into the center of their makeshift arena, where it landed very nearly at Soraya's feet.
Seeing art where the others saw conflict, Mary pulled out her phone to take a picture of the ear of corn on the cement floor.
"No pictures!" Davey yelled. A new rule that allowed him to take back control of the room.
"Listen," Mary said, looking at the way the light fell across the ear of corn in her photo and adjusting the saturation. "I'm not about to post stuff through the library's official feeds, but a few artsy shots on my finsta? That shit builds mystery."
Davey held out his hand for her phone.
"In the ancient world, anyone who revealed the secrets of the ritual would be killed by the other participants," Davey said. "I'm not even suggesting murder. I'm suggesting you hand over your fucking phones."
"Do you know how to have an experience and not post about it, Mary?" Kip said, handing Davey his phone.
Davey didn't like the idea of Kip taking his side. He reached over to where Kip had let his bag fall and tossed his own phone, and Kip's, into it.
"Not just Mary. I need everyone's," Davey said. "They'll all be kept together so we have the same rules for everyone, and they're in the bag, so no one is going to scroll through your dick pics."
Faye had a six-year-old iPhone that used a plastic case to hold together its cracked screen. She put it in the bag gently to keep it in one piece.
"I don't even know any of you," Ro said. He had his phone in his hand. The background image was of a giant white dog of indeterminate breed, all shaggy hair and goofy smiles. "I don't exactly think we have mutuals."
"You're here, you have the same rules as everyone else. I promise it'll be worth it." Davey plucked the phone from Ro's hand and dropped it into the bag.
"Does anyone have a second device?" Kip said, once they had all dropped their phones. He was looking at Mary, and Faye couldn't help but think, too, that Mary had a backup somewhere. "A stand-alone camera?" Kip said. "A BlackBerry you only use for messaging?"
"A BlackBerry?" Mary said. Ro laughed openly. Umu, who had once relied on Kip for grading, was a bit more subtle. Davey fumed that Kip was giving instructions at all. But Mary cackled louder than any of them. The hunger was making her punchy. "Sit down, Dad. I'm pretty sure no one snuck in a BlackBerry."
Davey threw Kip's backpack, now full of phones, off to the side. "Enough. We have everything."
"Some of us have better things to think about than which phone camera makes our eyes look the least slanted," Kip said, under his breath, slurred even, but still audible.
The laughter stopped.
The smirk that lingered on Mary's face after the BlackBerry joke stayed put. She didn't flinch, didn't so much as blush, didn't give any indication of Kip having landed a blow. Faye figured it had taken a lot of practice, this impermeability.
Faye was from the prairies, farm country, where demographics dictated that racism was more in theory than in practice. As a consequence, it was the most hateful thing she'd ever heard one person say to another. What happened now, after Mary's failure to flinch, Faye thought. A takedown? A physical confrontation? But when the laughter stopped, there was nothing that came after. Finally it was Ro, Ro who didn't know them at all, who got to his feet.
"He's with you, right?" he said to Soraya, as if Kip and his hatefulness were somehow her responsibility. "It's going to be a long night if you can't keep your man in check."
"All right, all right," Davey said, once Ro's threat had cleared the air and allowed them to look at one another again. "Ronald's locked up, so we know he won't be back down tonight, but he's still in the building. We'll hear a beep once he sets the alarm. But we can't start, or we shouldn't, until he's all the way out of here."
Seven faces turned upward. To the concrete ceiling above them, through it another layer of basement, another set of stacks, then another concrete ceiling, and only then the fine Persian rug that warmed the oak floor in Ronald's office. Ronald, who was at work later than he'd said he'd be.
"If there's an alarm, won't it go off the minute he sets it?" Ro said.
Those of them who knew the library best—Davey, Mary, Soraya—shook their heads in unison, but even Faye could have guessed the answer.
"Entry and exit alarms only," Soraya said, testing her voice after remaining silent about Kip's ugliness. "The space is way too big for motion detectors."
Faye was the only one still looking up at the ceiling.
"What about lights?" she said. "Won't he turn off the lights?" She hadn't been in the dark, the real dark, since leaving home. The campus was always lit up with security lights.
"If he was going to, he'd have done that when he was down here, locking up," Davey said. "There's no switch upstairs."
All around her were relieved faces. Faye wouldn't have been bothered either way. She rather missed the dark.
"We should dose now," Ro said. "It takes a while before it all happens." He was wearing dove-gray sweats. Faye hadn't noticed them before. Kip and Davey were both wearing chinos, they'd never have worn sweats to the library, but Faye thought they were beautiful. Not shapeless at all, they grew tighter around Ro's calves and ankles and the fabric looked soft enough to wrap a baby in. Faye didn't know anything about clothing, but she suspected that Ro thought quite a bit about how he presented himself.
"Who has the party favors?" Ro looked at Umu, who pointed at Davey.
Relishing the theatrical, Davey went to the shelf. He ran his finger across the books, one item at a time, before stopping at a slim, beige volume. He pulled it out with the tip of one finger and then held it aloft for the approval of the others. A collection of poetry, of course. A limited edition run of The Hill of Dionysus from the private press of Roy A. Squires. A bit on the nose. He handed the volume to Ro, who let it fall open and reveal seven tiny baggies, each containing a small white square with a little picture printed on it. Their guide to the underworld, wrapped in miniature Ziploc.
"Won't we be licking each other's eyeballs in five minutes if we take those now?" Kip said. "We're here for a ritual, not a bacchanal."
Ro handed each of them a baggie, starting with Davey. One for Umu, one for Mary, one for Faye, one for Soraya.
"Oh sorry, mate," Kip said. "Bacchanal means an occasion of wild, drunken revelry."
"Thanks, mate," Ro said. He hung a baggie between his thumb and forefinger in front of Kip's face. "It'll be thirty minutes, maybe an hour, before you feel anything at all. So if you want to stay on earth once the rest of us go airborne, by all means, wait."
Kip snatched the baggie, opened it up, put the tiny paper square on his tongue, and swallowed.
"You're not supposed to swallow it, asshole," Mary said. She grabbed the backpack of phones from where Davey had dumped them. "I'm going to go put these by the door so we don't lose track of them. We can grab them on the way out tomorrow." She flapped her little baggie in the air and disappeared around the corner with the backpack.
"Under your tongue and leave it there," Ro said. "You won't even feel it and it'll dissolve nice and slow."
"So, what the fuck, am I not going to feel anything at all?" Kip said.
"So, what the fuck, next time wait for instructions if you don't know what you're doing," Ro said. "You'll feel something, it'll just take longer."
Faye fiddled with the plastic between her thumb and forefinger. The tab was tiny. It had a blue star printed on it. Such a little thing, such a big decision.
Now, for Ro, taking a tab of acid in front of a group of strangers may well have been a regular Thursday evening activity, and in her heart she was sure that he gave it scarcely more thought than he would have given an invitation to join a pickup basketball game. Though if Faye was being honest with herself, wouldn't she be just as terrified of subjecting herself to the ridicule of sport?
She turned to her grounding of science, data always having been more palatable to her than intuition, but even that didn't help. The tab would loosen her inhibitions, certainly, but would it remove them altogether? What would she do? What would she say? Like with the roller skating all those months earlier, there were too many unknown variables. In a study she'd read in the journal Psychological Medicine, almost as many study participants had experienced anxiety after taking LSD as had experienced a blissful state.
She didn't even know any of these people. If she refused the drug, she'd look stupid; she knew that. But if she took it, she could look worse than stupid. She could experience a prolonged psychosis. She could be the butt of their jokes for years after. They're all going to talk about you, she thought. They're going to wish you hadn't come at all. Soraya put her tab under her tongue. Umu and Ro cheersed with theirs like they were glasses of champagne. Optimism was significantly increased in study participants for the two weeks after taking the dose. That sounded nice. That feeling of optimism wasn't felt by all the study participants, though, and the researchers hadn't been able to find any sort of correlation with other behavioral traits that might predict who would have a positive outcome and who wouldn't. There were too many unknown variables.
"I'm good," said Faye. She held the baggie back out to Ro. "High on life, you know."
Ro took the baggie from her and slipped it into his pocket. No one mocked Faye. No one said anything at all. That was almost worse. She knew they were saving it all to say behind her back.
"I don't feel anything yet," Kip said.
"We know," Soraya said. She wasn't inclined to be patient with him given how he'd just treated Mary. She stayed on the floor near Umu, making it clear she wasn't with him. "The kid just told you it'll take a while to kick in." She laid herself flat on her back on the cold concrete, looking at the ceiling like it was a sky full of stars. "What's the rush anyway? We haven't heard the alarm; Ronald's still here."
"You going to be able to get it up for my girlfriend after your dose?" Kip turned his attention to Davey. He snickered, actually snickered, at his own question. "It's just a shame we couldn't get a virgin. Or is that why she's here?" He pointed at Faye.
Faye, who already wanted to melt and turn invisible, felt her blush creep from her neck onto her cheeks with such ferocity, she was sure she was glowing.
"No," Kip continued. "It was always about Soraya, wasn't it? But you've gotta please the girl if you're going to please the gods, so make sure you can perform, Davey. Or you're going to need me, or god forbid, the kid, to step in."
Ro hadn't sat back down after handing out the drugs. He didn't know the others well enough to be offended for them, so until now, Kip's display had been mildly irritating but mostly funny.
"Problem though." Kip had come over to put his arm around Ro. "Look at the kid's pants. Do these look like the pants of someone who can please a woman? I'd bet a buffalo nickel that if Ro here is getting it up for anyone, it's for me or you." He patted Ro on the chest and then stepped away before Ro could push him. "You heard ‘Greek' and you came running, huh, kid?"
Kip slurred and swayed like he was already intoxicated. Faye didn't know well enough to know if that could be true, but she'd met men before who used a drink or two to cover for a meanness that was always in their blood.
"Maybe you should go for a walk?" Umu said. Umu, the only one who'd been spared his wrath so far, put her neck on the block.
"A walk?" Kip said. "Sure. I'll go for a walk. I'm going to go find a bucket to take a piss in."
He turned and left them. He even began to whistle as he walked away, as though to prove he didn't care what they thought of him at all.
***
In the bookstack behind her, Faye caught sight of a couple of names she recognized. Copernicus. Swift. The ornate quality of the books—their gilt spines and leather bindings—was something Faye could never wrap her head around. So much decoration and all she'd ever cared about were the contents. Copernicus's model of the universe was no less valuable without marbled end papers.
She kept her eye on the books until she was sure Kip was good and gone. Perhaps the basement had a secret passageway that opened after hours and he'd stumble into it and disappear. In her eyes, a party with the six of them was no worse than a party with seven. Maybe even better.
Umu had wrapped her arms around Ro, the comfort of an old friendship, and now neither of them looked fussed at all. Soraya was still on the floor, but Soraya walked out hand in hand with Kip every day, even when his behavior was barbaric. Davey was busy pulling supplies out from behind books where he'd hidden them throughout the week, and Mary—Mary who should be furious!—was braiding a section of her own hair.
Kip is disgusting, she thought. Every one of Faye's muscles was tense. She couldn't believe how much she hated him all of a sudden. How much she hated him and how certain she was that he didn't deserve to be down in that basement with the rest of them.