How High We Go in the Dark(21)

I can sense the shape of the others around me as we push through the dark like a conga line. The lawyer asks people for their theories, and it’s not long until we connect the plague to this place. None of us can tell how long we have been gone. We aren’t tired or hungry. There has to be an edge, a door or stairwell to somewhere else. If we cry out loud enough, someone will hear us. When the old woman begins to sing to fill the silence, we immediately join in, taking turns with our own selections—the Carpenters followed by the Beatles and the Talking Heads.

I’m in the middle of “Kokomo” when the lawyer matter-of-factly interrupts and confesses that he’s been having an affair.

“TMI,” the gamer kid says. “Random much?”

“I’m afraid my wife will leave,” the lawyer says. “I have a family.”

“A possibility,” the old woman says. “But if you’re not honest with her, things will never be quite right.”

“We just sharing shit now? Okay, my older brother was murdered in a hit-and-run,” the gamer kid says. “He was traveling with a bad crowd, you know. Not that I was a saint.”

“Mom died of an overdose when I was a baby,” the felon says. “Not what you think. She was just taking these pills to stay up because I wouldn’t stop crying. My dad pretty much blamed me for her being gone. Been an asshole to me my entire life.”

I wait a long time to confess anything about myself. I never snuck out at night to smoke. I never had an affair (never had a real girlfriend, for that matter). My parents and I moved to America after my father’s job ended with the shuttering of the Fukushima power plant. We helped my uncle in Berkeley with his bakery. I received scholarships for college. But I also remember long lines in drab government buildings, my mother crying at night. I rarely spoke in class because I was ashamed of how I sounded. I rarely spoke to anyone, and yet I wrote constantly. I was afraid I wouldn’t make my parents proud, even though they told me they were whenever I showed them my stories and poetry. I’d spend hours locked in my room the summers I was home from college. My father would take out his reading glasses and flip through my pages with an electronic translator.

“Yes, good. Very good,” he’d say, passing the pages to my mother. He kept a notebook in his shirt pocket where he’d write the words and idioms that were unfamiliar to him, and he’d try to work this new vocabulary into conversation— Isn’t dinner a ball? This picture you took has good chiaroscuro. Wicked tasty, teriyaki. I’m stoked for your graduation.

“So talented,” my mother would say. “But when will you get paid?”

“Soon,” I would tell my parents. “Art takes time. It’s all about finding the right people who get your work. It’s very complicated.”

I think about my parents and uncle waiting for me at the bakery where I work part-time in the summer. Maybe they’ll assume I’m wrapped up in my writing. I think about my family waiting for me at home, calling the police. I can see my father taking out his notebook from his top pocket, talking to detectives, telling them to break a leg.

We hear new voices in the void as we push on. A cry for help, a drawn-out hello. We instruct the newcomers to follow our voices— over here, over here now—until our bodies collide.

“I was driving the twenty-eight bus. Just pulled out of Fillmore, and suddenly all went black. Felt like I was falling,” one newcomer says.

“Falling?” several people murmur.

“Like I was wearing a parachute.”

“Anybody remember falling?” I ask.

Silence.

“My god, my passengers,” the bus driver says. “My bus.”

I consider the stories of the newcomers—what if we did come from above? And what does above mean in a place where we can touch the air beneath our feet? For all we know, we’ve been walking in circles.

“So, what are you saying?” the felon says.

“Maybe up is the only way out,” I say.

“Or there is no way out,” the gamer kid says. “Like an animal trap.”

“Let’s say there is a way out up there. How do we reach it?” the lawyer asks. “It’s not like we have a ladder.”

More voices reverberate in the distance. Too many to discern any kind of direction. The silence evolves into a steady hum like a crowded cafeteria. Fragments of English, Spanish, German, Chinese, languages I can’t make out. I tell everyone to count off: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 . . . 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 . . . 63, 64, 65 . . . what if, what if . . .

“Are you fucking nuts?” the felon says. “This ain’t no circus.”

“Oh, I don’t think I’d be able to do that,” the old woman says. And maybe I have my doubts, but we need to try something.

“C’mon everyone, think about it,” I say. “Whatever we are here, these aren’t our real bodies. We’re not tired or hungry. We don’t feel hot or cold. I think we can do this. I don’t think we can get hurt.”

We try to arrange ourselves by size to create a human pyramid; figuring this out feels like it takes hours or even days. People shout their height and weight. But I’m not a doctor or a police officer and so the numbers mean little to me. We move on to broad descriptions— pretty big dude, you know? I work out. I picture a tank top and gym shorts.