Keeper of the Streets

The next morning was gray and blustery, with plumes of snow blowing off the roofs of buildings and the streets black with ice. The first thing she did was go to the window and look for him, but the doorway was empty. Later however, after she'd showered and dressed and was pulling the Lexus onto the street from her garage, he was back, and there was no doubt this time.

He stood there in the doorway by the same ragged shopping cart, neither looking at her or away from her, seemingly a part of the street. She wasn't frightened any more. Lia didn't frighten easily, and now that she'd calmed down and it was daytime, she felt something more akin to curiosity. The cabby's death hung in the back of her mind like a stubborn nightmare, tingeing everything with a feel of foreboding. She knew that the man in the street was the key to understanding what had happened, yet she couldn't see how she could possibly approach him now. The whole episode seemed like a dream.

She was distracted at work and not herself. She took lunch in her office and watched the local news on her office TV. Everything was about the storm: power outages, highway disasters. The death of the cabbie was mentioned and there was footage of the smashed cab lying amidst the torrent of salt, surrounded by the flashing lights of the rescue vehicles. Lia sat with her spoon of yogurt posed by her lips and felt a wave of nausea engulf her as she watched the steaming breath of the reporter standing in front of the wreck. A terrible wave of fear at the ugliness and brutality of death made her turn from the TV and stare at the gray blankness outside her window. Fear climbed up her spine and raised the hairs on the back of her neck.

She threw herself into her work. She made calls, she met with her aids. She refused to let herself think about it, but it wouldn't go away. By the time she left it was dark, and by then her fear had been replaced by a stubborn need to find the homeless man and find out what he knew.

She didn't have far to look. When she came to the building across the street from her apartment, there he was, standing in the doorway where she'd seen him last night. She pulled up to the curb and opened the power window on the passenger side and leaned over.

But there must be some mistake. The man who stepped out of the shadows was a business man in a black wool coat with a trim mustache and salt-and-pepper hair. She stared at him through the open window and he stared back and smiled. In that instant she knew in the pit of her stomach there was no mistake. It was the same man, the same eyes. She could see that he recognized her too.

She fought down a surge of sudden panic. "What is this?"

"May I get in? I'm not dressed for this weather. Not like last night."

"Who are you?"

He reached a gloved hand inside the window, unlocked the passenger door and got in. The leather seat sighed under his weight.

"Who the fuck are you?" Lia was confused, but she wasn't quite afraid.

He strapped the seat belt across his chest and gestured with his head as a car behind her sounded its horn. "I suggest you drive. I'll tell you everything as we go."

Lia pulled her eyes from his face as the car behind her honked again. She focused her eyes on the street and pulled away from the curb, her hands rigid on the wheel.

"My name's Bosun," he said, closing the window. "And yes, I'm the man who saved your life last night."

"What? Were you slumming or something? Where's your shopping cart?"

He smiled, showing even, white teeth. "It's safe. Waiting for me when I get back. You work at Benrus, right? Benrus and Steele, the PR company that handles things for Ferris?"

Lia glanced at him sharply. "Who told you that? How did you know my name last night? Just who the fuck are you?"

"Turn here," he said. "I want to go down to the Loop. I want to show you something."

"No. I'm not going anywhere. Not until you answer my questions." She wanted to pull over, but the curbs were lined with cars and traffic was thick. There was no choice but to keep driving.

"Okay. Who am I? I'm what you call a homeless person. A bum. I'm one of those people you never notice. That's okay, though. We like it that way."

"Look at the way you're dressed. You don't look homeless to me."

"I can make myself look like whatever I want. I'm not what you think."

Lia looked at him derisively and opened her mouth to say something when she saw his form suddenly blur and become featureless and indistinct, and the next second the businessman was gone and she was looking at the scraggly bum from the streets.

She gasped and bit her tongue in fright, instinctively slammed on the brakes and jerked the wheel to the left, almost hitting a parked car. Horns behind her blared

She looked at him again but now the businessman was back, looking over his shoulder with mild annoyance at the traffic commotion they'd caused. Lia stared at him in astonishment. There was no doubt what she'd seen: his coat had gone from coal black to dirty ash-gray; his hair had grown long and colorless and the very smell of him had changed. The scent still hung in the air, a smell of cold concrete and ashes.

"Jesus Christ! What the fuck was that? What did you just do?"

"Drive, Lia," he said calmly. "The Loop."

Lia clenched her jaw tight against her rising panic and stared straight ahead, hands in a death grip on the wheel. It must have been a trick of the light. Maybe hypnosis. Maybe there was something wrong with her

"What are you?" she asked nervously. "Some sort of magic show or something? What the hell was that?"

"Listen to me Lia," he said deliberately. "I'm going to tell you who I am, and then you're going to tell me who you are, because you're not what you seem either, are you? You look like a sane and intelligent woman who lives in a sane and intelligent world, but things aren't always what they seem, are they?"

She tried not to look at him, terrified he was going to change into something else. Her fright made her nauseous. "I don't know what you're talking about."

He turned so he was facing front and he calmly patted his tie in place. "I'll tell you this once, because I've learned through experience that once is either enough or it's entirely too much, so take it as you will. I'm one of the keepers."

He stared at her sharply, and again Lia had that feeling of his seeing through her, of seeing into her skin. He looked away with a slightly puzzled expression that made her feel she had failed some test. She felt slightly indignant.

"Keepers? What keepers?"

"This city is alive. Literally. It's like a living organism, growing, feeling, changing, falling ill and getting better. All these people, all these cars and buildings and stop lights and all the stuff that comes in and goes out, they're like the cells and organs in its body. The city is greater than the sum of its parts, just like a living organism, and all these people and things are running about and living their lives totally unaware of what their function is or that they're part of something bigger than themselves, but they are. And so are you and so am I. But there's one difference: I'm aware of it. I'm one of the few who knows."

Lia stole a glance at him, afraid to look at him directly. They were driving under streetlights now and squares of light were passing over his face as he spoke, making him vanish into shadow and then reappear. His eyes were calm and he looked entirely reasonable, and his bland normality only made Lia's rising panic worse.

"We keepers are like the white blood cells in the body of the city. We hunt through the streets and alleys looking for sickness and signs of infection. We know the signs and we do what we can. We keep our finger on the city's pulse and know when it's healthy and when it's sick. We know all sorts of things. It's our life. It's what we do."

"What did you do just now. How did you do that?"

He sat back with a sigh, unsure whether she'd heard anything he'd just said. "I told you. I can be whatever I want. I'm not what you would exactly call human, Lia. I find it convenient to appear to others as a homeless person. Many of us do. We go where we want, nobody sees us, and nobody pays any attention to what we do. All homeless people are crazy. Everyone knows that, right?"

Lia had to look at him. She couldn't help it. She was terrified he was going to turn into something else and she didn't want to be caught by surprise.

"Are you an alien or something? Is that what you mean?"

He smiled indulgently and shook his head.

"Well, where do you come from? Where do you live? What do you want with me?"

"It's not important where I come from, and anyway I don't really know. I've always been like this, and as far as I can tell we seem to just grow, produced by the city when it needs us. Wherever there's a vacant lot, an old alley, an abandoned factory, we seem to sprout up. It's really something to see. I found a keeper once growing in the corner of an empty warehouse, right under a pile of old newspapers. Funny how that happens.

"As to where I live, I live all over. It doesn't matter. I might have a penthouse apartment, or I can live in a box under the expressway. Like a white blood cell, I go where I'm needed."

Lia laughed. It wasn't a good laugh. "You're crazy, you know that? I think you're fucking out of your mind!"

"Fair enough," he said, turning in his seat to face forward. "That's fine with me. In fact, it's better that way. Now, I've told you who I am. You tell me who you are."

"You already know who I am, remember? You called me by name last night, so you must have been talking to someone. Who is it? Candy Mosher?"

Again his eyes searched into her, and this time Lia had had enough.

"Damn it! Stop looking at me like that. I don't like it!"

"This is very strange," he said. "You really don't know anything, do you?"

The question wasn't rhetorical, and as he waited for her answer, Lia felt the goose bumps start on the backs of her arms again.

"No." There was a hint of despair in her voice. "I don't. I really don't."

They drove in silence for half a block, and then nodded with his head. "Turn left at the corner."

Lia made a left onto Adams street. They were back in the Loop now, the streets crowded with people going home in the evening rush, bundled against the cold and walking cautiously around the patches of ice on the sidewalks.

"You know what this is?" he asked. They were driving past a big new construction site in the heart of downtown, a vast empty plot lined now with plywood construction barrier and pedestrian walkways.

"I ought to. That's block seventeen. Ferris and Kaminsky's putting up Synergy Tower there. Why? What do you care?"

"Tell me about it. Tell me what you know."

She shrugged. "Big project, multi-use. Offices and condos. Thirty-three stories, mall, multiplex. It's going to be their flagship building, the anchor for the New Downtown. We're doing their PR, and in fact they're supposed to break ground on Friday."

"That's it? That's all you know?"

She laughed bitterly. "Why? Lower Wacker's not good enough for you now? You in the market for a condo?"

He ignored her sarcasm. "It's not good. They're upsetting things. There's something very wrong here."

They came to a red light and Lia looked at him. "That's one hell of a piece of real estate. People have been after it for years: prime location, right downtown. It was all tied up in zoning for ever and Ferris had to grease a lot of palms and pull a lot of strings to get the permits. Now it's theirs and they're building on it. What's the big deal?"

He looked at her and in the dark of the car his eyes were calm and clear and level. If he was crazy, he was the sanest looking lunatic she'd ever seen. There was great sadness in his eyes too, and despite her unease, Lia felt for him, for whatever private devils he was struggling with.

"It's all the layering," he said. "The thickness. You get all these people and their thoughts and plans and emotions. They all crowd together till all the meanings and feelings get all tangled up, so tangled up they takes on a life of its own. That's what makes the city live, these densities of emotion, these layers. Like an emotional compost heap, and then something grows from it. Do you understand?"

Whatever response he was hoping for from her, he didn't get it.

"There's something very evil out there," he said. "Our people are being killed. The keepers are disappearing, and there are holes in the worlds. It has to do with that building. If you know how to read the signs, they all point to that building."

"You were almost killed last night too," he said. "That's what puzzles me. They were coming for you too, and I don't understand why."

Lia felt a chill. "Me? Why me? Who's coming for me?"

"The signs were there," he said. "That's how I knew. That cab was doomed."

"What signs? And who are you talking about?"

She felt Bosun's eyes on her and turned to him. He smiled as if to reassure her. "Nothing human, if that's what you're worried about."

Lia saw the red light at the last moment and jammed on the brakes. Pedestrians jumped out of the way, one man bundled up so tightly she couldn't even see his eyes smacked an angry mitten down on the hood of her car and yelled some hopelessly muffed expletives at her. She looked at the crowds of people waddling past. They looked like mummies wrapped up against the cold: faceless, featureless.

Bosun sighed and sat back in his seat. "It's very strange. It's like nothing we've ever seen before. We don't know who it is or even what. And now there are signs that tell me you're involved, but I can see now you're not. It's very strange."

Bosun folded his hands in his lap and closed his eyes and seemed to be lost in meditation. The light changed and Lia pulled away, following traffic, leaving block seventeen behind. She glanced in her rearview and looked at it again, a great, gaping empty spot on State Street in the heart of the Loop. It had lain vacant for over a decade as developers and politicians fought over it, made deals and sold each other out. Great gobs of state money had flowed into that empty space, commissions had been formed and dissolved, more money spent. Even the Feds had gotten involved at one point , and still not one spadeful of earth had ever been lifted. He was right about one thing, if ever a piece of ground was thick with human feeling - plans and dreams, greed and power and betrayal - that would be it.

Now, though, as it faded from sight in her mirror, there was nothing to see but the faceless façade of plywood fencing already sporting some crude graffiti, and a couple of construction trailers at the edge of the lot. The heavy equipment hadn't arrived yet and there was really nothing to see. Bosun didn't even look back at it.

"Turn here," he said, pointing to a ramp that led downwards. "I want you to see this."

"Lower Wacker?" she asked spinning the wheel. "Not again?"

He ignored her. "I don't know why you were pointed out to me and I don't know what this means, but I have to show you something. It might be important."

"You don't know this," Bosun went on. "But consciousness flickers. The world you see isn't continuous, but more like frames in a movie clicking by very fast. What most people don't know is that there are other movies hidden between those frames too, whole different versions of reality. That's where I live and where me and my friends do our business, between those frames. I can make you see it. It's not hard, and I want you to know."

The car rolled down the ramp, leaving the lights of the city behind and entering the stygian gloom of the street below the streets. The old sodium vapor lights down here gave everything a greenish cast, making the concrete pilings and loading docks look eerily watery and submarine.

"Ready?" he asked.

He reached out and touched the back of her neck, and Lia felt a little jolt, a little electric shock, and then she gasped as a whole new world unfolded before her. For as far as she could see, the sides of the roadway were lined with office cubicles with people working at them, a veritable hive of activity, stretching out as far as she could see.

Her eyes widened in panic. "What the hell is this? What is all this? I've never seen this before."

"Pull over. Anywhere. Just nose in over there. You're seeing between the frames now, Lia. This is my world, or one of them."

She pulled over to the side of the road and they got out. She automatically reached for the clicker to lock her doors, then realized that would be silly. There was no doubt now that she was in another world.

Bosun came around and took her arm and walked her over to the nearest cube. A man sat at a desk while another man and a woman leaned over his chair and studied some papers with him. There were piles of paper all over. The people, the furniture, the walls of the cubicles all seemed slightly hazy and indistinct. Lia realized that they were semi-transparent too. She could see the curb through the desk.

"Who are these people? Can they see us?"

"Oh sure, but they're busy. This is what we call a ghost office. These are people who used to work in the city. They're dead now or they've lost their jobs – it's all the same to them - but they still want to work. It's all they know, so they come here. It's something we provide for them. Kind of a service. They're comfortable here."

Bosun slid a piece of paper off a pile on the desk and looked at it, then showed it to Lia. It was old and yellowed and had been glued to another piece of paper to keep it from falling apart. It looked like it might be an ancient papyrus, but all it was a carbon copy of a handwritten bill of lading for engine parts for 1978 Ford Mustangs.

Lia looked up at Bosun in confusion.

"I know," he said. "It's meaningless work. They just copy out all these old receipts and ledgers and memos. That's all they do, but it's what they're comfortable doing and they like it. There are ghost offices like this all over the city. There's a special prestige to working downtown, though. This is the big time. But that's not what I wanted to show you. Come over here."

He led her through a maze of cubicles and hallways, amidst the clatter of typewriters and telephones ringing, all so strange and out of place with the street above their heads and the asphalt below them. He brought her up short on the edge of what looked like a battlefield or the scene of a meteor strike. The cubicles were crushed and trampled, their neat order reduced to chaos, and garbage and trash were strewn about. A cloud of greasy, acrid smoke drifted from the center of the wreckage where flames flickered dully amidst the shattered desks and overturned chairs and bags of refuse.

The scene was desolate, but what was even more horrifying was the way the ghost workers ignored it all, walking around with their meaningless papers in their hands and answering their ringing phones.

There was a feeling of palpable evil arising out of this place, and Lia instinctively put her hand over her stomach to quell a feeling of visceral alarm. She was still holding the useless bill of lading.

"What is this?" she asked. "What happened here?"

"We don't know." Bosun said. "It's a hole in the world. We're seeing holes like this all over. We don't know why. We don't know what's happening."

He turned to go and suddenly caught sight of something on the street that made him grab Lia's arm and pull her back. She followed his gaze and saw a pile of spilled trash, as if a garbage can had been overturned. At the head of the pile was a bag of frozen green peas, a fist-sized hole punched in the middle, burnt around the edges, a mess of smashed green peas leaking out.

"What? What's wrong?" she asked him.