Nine Island by Jane Alison Page B

and saints, a trio emerged from the dark: small mothy Lino and two girls like the light-girl. Their cheekbones in the street lamp were Russian. The girl on Lino’s left had blond hair, the girl on his right had red, their breasts the height of his nose. He’d picked them up? They’d picked him? Over his white hat they looked at each other, then each slipped a hand through a crook’d arm, and the three went into the building.
    I waited, invisible, by the Dumpsters until the freight elevator had taken them.
    Lino lives in the Tower, I happen to know. It’s better even than the Penthouse, marked on the elevator panel as T.
    I have not yet dared go up there.
    I mean, I barely dare come in through the lobby.
    A few minutes later the girl-fragrant elevator came back to me, and I rode to my twenty-first floor. And thought about the fact that in the bordello and silver apartment across the way, and the spa downstairs, and bars and bathrooms up and down the Beach, and even in miniature Lino’s tower, all sorts of sex were waged.
    Lay in bed then and stared at the popcorn ceiling in the dark, bones grinding into the mattress.
    It wasn’t Fury really.
    Just Time whetting his knife.
    How long can you float in the hourglass pool?
    Sudden glow beside my bed:
    So? wrote the Devil . Ready to deal with me again?

A NOTICE HAS appeared in the mail room: next week will be elections for a new board.
    Lino!
    What do you think? I asked Tina.
    She looked up from her logbook, braids jingling with beads. I don’t know, she said. I just don’t. What I do know is that there is always trouble, no matter what board we have. This one we have now? They’ve been here a decade . They will not leave peacefully.
    So there will be trouble?
    Oh yes, she said, and handed me my box.
    Back on the balcony working on transmutation thirteen—halfway through, done with the stories of hunting and running and on to incest and sex-change—water again splashed my arm and, when I craned out to see her, my face.
    For fuck’s sake .
    No one up there, only drops falling, bright with sun, out of the deep blue sky.
    Stalked inside and down the dark hallway and out into the flaring light to the external stairway and up to the twenty-second floor and down that hall until I reached her door and knocked. Nothing. Knocked again, pounded —there was a stirring up and down the hall. Her door cracked open: an owlish face with a quiff of hair and eyes that were small and mean.
    Come on , I said. I’m soaked.
    I cannot do anything about it, she said.
    What?
    I have a garden. A garden needs water. There is nothing I can do.
    You can water more carefully, that’s what you can do!
    I am doing the best I can, she said, and shut the door and locked it.
    If your plants were inside, I bet you’d water better! I shouted at the wood.
    When I turned around N stood at her door, sunlight flowing behind her.
    Oh my, she said.
    It’s funny, I said, everyone drops things from their balconies on this floor!
    Her head tilted, troubled.
    I’m kidding, I said. It’s just you and whatever it is you do out there and now this woman and her water.
    Oh, right, N said.
    Okay, I said. Okay. How are you?
    Oh, and she let her hand and word float.
    What do you think about the new board elections?
    Well, she said. It’ll be interesting no matter how it goes.
    They all seem nuts.
    Sure they are. She smiled and after a moment said, Do you know what Harry and Tom on the board call you? Professor Mermaid. Because, you know—she spread out her arms—there you are with the dictionaries and all. By the pool. In the bikini .
    My face must have looked funny because she quickly said, No, no, they’re not teasing you, they like that you swim and work hard. They admire it. They’re attracted to you. If you like, you know, I could—
    Attracted! I reeled down the hall. Okay, two eighty-year-old men are attracted to me, two men