Angel
The door is flanked by two curtained windows with big flower arrangements in them, it makes the place look more like a discreet and expensive restaurant than a funeral parlor. The first person I see is Orchid—long white hair and black satin quilted jacket with, of course, a huge white silk orchid appliqued across the back. Then Cinnabar, who isn’t wearing red. Cinnabar is really Cinnabar Chavez’ first name, so I guess he doesn’t have to prove anything, he only wears red when he flies.
Some fliers take on their flying name, like Orchid. Everybody calls her Orchid. I don’t even know what her name is. But nobody calls Eleni “Jacinth” except the marks. Nobody calls me Gargoyle, they just call me Angel. But everybody calls Johnny B “Johnny B,” even though we all know his name is Gregory.
Cinnabar sees me, waves me over. He’s a good flier for a guy, a little tall, he’s 1.55 meters but so skinny he doesn’t mass over forty-eight kilos. Flying runs in his family, his brother was Random Chavez—bet you didn’t know he even had a last name. Of course, he was killed in that big smash, Jesus, five years ago? I’m
getting old. That was the year I started flying the big kites. I was there, I finished that race.
“Pijiu?”
Cinnabar says. We give each other a hug. There’s a spread, a funeral banquet, but I can’t eat at funerals. Just as well, since I have to keep my weight at about thirty-nine kilos, and beer has too many calories. Orchid preens, looking strange and graceful as a macaw. I check, no cameras and of course she’s not synched. She must do it by instinct.
We don’t have anything to say to each other. So we stand around the viewing room feeling guilty. The dead can feel virtuous I suppose. Dead dead dead. That’s for all you people who say “passed away.”
People die for different reasons; the young ones—the ones with good reflexes die because they take risks, the older ones die because their reflexes or synapses let them down. Not that we don’t all cut up and take risks, it’s just that the older you get, the less often you get in positions where you have to, or maybe you know that there’s another race.
“Kirin was a nice girl,” Cinnabar says.
I didn’t really know the deceased all that well. I mean, she’d flown and all but she’d only been riding in the big kites a year or so, and I was out for three months because I tore a ligament in my shoulder. Besides, she was ABC, American Born Chinese, she even had citizenship in China. Opens a lot of doors. ABC don’t have to associate with
waiguoren
from Brooklyn. Especially
waiguoren
having a bad year. Funny, when I was growing up I didn’t know that
waiguoren
meant foreigner, because the ABC were the foreigners to me. I always thought it meant not-Chinese.
“Are you flying tonight?” I ask.
“I’m going down to Florida this afternoon,” Orchid says. She goes down there a lot to fly.
“You be out at Washington Square?” Cinnabar asks me.
“If Georgia can get the Siyue off the ground.” Georgia’s my tech.
“You’re still flying a Siyue?” Orchid asks, white eyebrows arching all disdainful.
Cinnabar looks away as if he hasn’t heard, to save me face. Last year Citinet dropped me and I’ve been flying independent. Orchid knows that.
Meiqian,
I’m a poor woman, last year’s kite. Bitch. But Orchid isn’t going to be dropped, no. Even if she isn’t having a good year, she makes a good cover story. Pretty girl, a popular synch.
“Angel,” Cinnabar says, “jailai tonight on Guatemala Avenue, want to go back to the old neighborhood?”
“Let’s see how the race goes.”
Cinnabar is such a sweetheart. He comes from Brooklyn, like me. Orchid looks bored, pampered little Virginia girl.
“If you come in money,” Cinnabar says, “You pay.”
I laugh.
At Washington Square, Georgia and I have got the Siyue working and I lift the kite over my head, holding it so I can feel the wind in the silk. It hums, a huge insect. I’m wired into the half-awake kite and moving in sensory overlap—I have arms and wings both feeding through parallel synapses and if I think about which I am trying to move it’s like trying to pat my head and rub my stomach at the same time. But I’m lit and my mind is chemical clear. My black silk wings are taut and light above me. I am called
Angel,
with the soft “h” sound of Brooklyn for the “g,” and I am burning, waiting for the race. I stand 1.47 meters tall and weigh thirty-nine kilos but I’m strong, probably stronger than you. My joints are like cables, the ligaments and tendons in my shoulders are all synthetic after the last surgery, strong as spider web, far stronger than steel.
If my kite holds together, there is no one who can beat me. I feel it.
I jog a few meters, and then start to run lightly. There is the
faint vibration of power as the sensors signal that I’ve reached the threshold between drag and lift and the system trips into active, and when the power feeds through the kite the full system comes on, and I swing my legs up into the harness by habit because I don’t even have a body anymore. My body is the kite. I feel the air on my silk, I balance on the air. The kite is more than a glider, because it needs a power source which is fueled by my own metabolism, but the original kites—hang gliders—were true gliders; a kite
does
fly. I mean, I’m not a rock. I won’t just fall.
I climb in lazy circles, there’s two fliers spiraling up above me, one below me.
Loushang
is Medicine, her kite patterned like a Navajo sand painting even from where I see it underneath.
Louxia
I can’t see, they are between me and the groundlight, so all I can see is the silhouette of a Liuyue kite. I test the kite, my left shoulder aches like rheumatism. It’s an old kite, it has aches and pains.
Then they are starting to form up; eighteen kites, two abreast, I am six back, on the outside. I drop into place, and we do a slow circle of the course. Eighteen triangles of bright silk. The course goes from Washington Square Park to Union Square and back, following The Swath. Over the Square the ground is a maze of lights, then suddenly the groundlights end and there’s nothing below us but the undergrowth and debris of the 2059 riots. Off to my right I see the bracelet of lights where Broadway goes under The Swath—I never remember to call it Huang Tunnel, it’s still Morrissey to me—and then there’s nothing but the floaters lighting us until we’re over Union Square. Long sweeping turn over Union Square and just as we straighten up, like a long strung-out New Year’s dragon made of kites, we’re back over The Swath. Off to my right and slightly behind me now is midtown. I count floaters, there are five and then we are over Washington Square Park. I catch a glimpse of the betting board but it’s too small to read from up here.
I wonder briefly how many people are synched with me. I used
to be self-conscious about the people who are tied in, experiencing what I experience as I fly. Now I don’t think of them as separate people much—a teenage boy somewhere in Queens, maybe an old man in the Bronx. If the numbers get high enough, Citinet will sponsor me again. But why sponsor someone with last year’s kite? Someone who probably won’t win? When they dropped me at Citinet, they told me I was too precise a flier. I made all the rational choices, took no chances. I am too cold, no fun.
I told them no one was going to follow me down into The Swath, fighting to regain control of my kite, until the automatic cutoff kills the synch just nanoseconds before impact. One of them muttered at least then I’d be doing something interesting.
We come back over Washington Square Park for the second time and the kites begin to pick up speed. We glide past the floater marking the start and already I’m climbing, trying to get altitude. Ten kites are in front of me and I sideslip slightly inside, cutting off Medicine, flying to my left. She’s forced to go underneath me, ends up flying
xialou,
my shadow underneath except that my kite is black silk and hers is a Navajo pattern in red, black, white and blue. I see Cinnabar ahead, flying third—a scarlet kite with edges that bleed into cinnamon.
And we are over The Swath. I dive. Not hard, just enough to gain speed. A black kite disappears over The Swath, there is only the silver of the lights reflecting like water on my silk. I hang there underneath Kim (whose work name is Polaris but who I have always called Kim). The dive has put merely the lightest of strain on my frame and the ache in my shoulder is no worse. Still, I wait, to see where everyone is when we flash out over Union Square. I settle in, working steadily. I’m not winded, I feel good. I drink air out of my facemask.
Out over the lights of Union Square.
I am somewhere around fifth, we aren’t in neat rows anymore. I feel strong, I’ve got my pace. I look for Cinnabar. He has dropped back, but he is high, high above me,
shanglou.
When my
kite was new, I rode up there,
shanglou.
We are a spume of color, a momentary iridescence over Union Square, and then we are back over The Swath. I am climbing, forcing myself up. I feel rather than see someone swoop underneath me. Not Cinnabar, he’s waiting. I push a bit, counting under my breath as I pass floaters. One, two, three, four, five, and we are out in the lights again. I have held on to fifth, and am even with most of the pack, but Cinnabar is above me, and Riptide has taken low lead. She was the swoop I felt. Kim is slightly in front of me, and in the light, she dives a bit and then rises like a sailfish, sprinting forward. She arcs up and starts to fall into acceleration, but a blue kite flown by some rookie whose name I don’t remember neatly sideslips across her trajectory, and she must spill air to avoid. And then we are over the darkness for the second and final circuit. Again I climb. One, two, three, four, five, and we are over Union Square. I am higher than Kim and Riptide, but Cinnabar is somewhere higher above me, so I continue to climb. Something, some sense, tells me just as we are going into the dark that he is diving, and I dive, too. A kite has to come in at least two hundred meters above the ground, that’s for safety. I am ahead of Cinnabar, I don’t know how far. Everyone is diving through the dark, ahead of me I sense the rookie, she is in my arc. I let my wings catch lift just for a second, feeling the strain, coming just over the top of her, and for a moment I’m afraid I’ve cut it too close.
But I’m over her, and I feel her lose it for a second, brake, spill air, startled and trying to avoid a collision that would have happened before she had time to react. The wind is so cold across my wings. I’m taking great gulps of air. My shoulder is aching.
Something moves faster, over me, Cinnabar, and I dive deeper, but the frame of my kite begins to shudder and I’m afraid to trust it. I ease up on the dive, trying to power-sprint forward, but my shoulder twinges and the kite shudders and is suddenly clumsy. Something has given in the left side of the kite. Frantic I spill air, lose speed and altitude as wings flash around me, over me, under
me, but the kite is under control. I come into the light, crippled, losing altitude. The others flash across the finish. By the time I get to the finish, I’m at 150 meters, too low. Cinnabar Chavez is taking his victory lap as I touch down, running, feeling the strain in my knees of trying to slow the broken kite, then walking.
Georgia, tall and heavy-hipped, my tech, takes the kite, lifts it off my shoulders. She doesn’t say anything. I don’t say anything. What’s to say?
I feel heavy, dirt solid. I take off my facemask and gulp air. God, I’m tired.
Cinnabar is flushed with winning, he’s been having a so-so year, he’s been hungry for a win. But everybody is always hungry for a win. He comes and finds me where Georgia and I are packing up my broken kite. It’s nice of him to think of me. He’s a little embarrassed to be standing there while we finish crating it, it takes a long time because part of the frame is bent and it won’t fit.
I compliment him on his win and he says
“Nali-nali,
” making a don’t-talk-about-it motion with his hand, looking away across the park. But he’s wound up. “Come meet me, by my crew,” he says, too tense to wait, and why should he when there are people waiting for him?
So I go to find him, and a bunch of us go out to a place on La Guardia where we can drink and make a lot of noise. It’s called Commemorative, and fliers hang out there. Cinnabar’s picked up two guys; a blond and an ABC, both clearly bent. So’s Cinnabar. They aren’t fliers, of course. Cinnabar has the hots for the blond, whose name is Peter. He isn’t tall, not for, you know, a non-flier, I’m not good at heights, maybe one-seven? And not heavy. But next to him Cinnabar looks like nothing but bone and hair. He’s pretty, too. And scrawny Cinnabar is not pretty.
They’re talking about going to see some jailai, but I figure they
don’t need me along, so I say I’m tired and have to get up tomorrow to look at the kite. The ABC says he’s tired, too, which surprises me.
“How are you getting home?” he asks me. It’s the first time he’s spoken to me all night, but then Cinnabar and the blond have been doing all the talking.
What’s he think, I’m going home by limo? “Subway,” I say.
“I’ll walk with you,” he offers.