The Nobody People by Bob Proehl (manga ereader TXT) 📕

a sense of the scope. Maybe it’s a dozen assholes reliving the glory days of Homan Square in their off hours. Some tech billionaire bankrolling them for kicks. But Avi, my guys are not unique. Any office, the guys are more or less the same. If they’re doing it in Chicago, they’ll do it everywhere.”

He finishes his whiskey and gets up to leave. His hand is on the door handle when he stops. “Your kid,” he says, turning around. “Go get Emmeline and get her on a plane. In Europe they’re not thinking like this. Get your kid out of this country.”

The cops are as useless as Carrie expected but kinder. Chicago PD set up a Resonant liaison working out of the station house on California Avenue: Officer Kowalski, a portly Polish man with a walrus mustache. “My nephew’s one of youse,” he explains to Carrie as he fills out the missing persons report. “Speed. He tried to keep it hidden. Track star his freshman year. One race he took off in a blur, and that was the ball game. School stripped him of every medal. It’s not fair what they do to youse for doing your best.”

The officer’s enlightened views aside, there are no follow-up calls from the police. No one comes to their apartment to look for clues or dust for prints or whatever they do in a situation like this. Cops don’t come to North Avenue, not for anything good. Not to help. The residents of North Avenue have an unspoken policy of not calling the cops. There was an incident a year before. Some polo shirt–sporting U of C undergrad swore he’d been mugged by a gang of Resonants on North. It made the news, and Chicago’s sizable angry white population descended on the neighborhood. The cops obliged by rolling through, banging on doors and soliciting alibis. It was a week before they figured out the kid hadn’t been anywhere near North Avenue. He had paid his friends to rough him up so he could look the victim. Crowds and cops ebbed, but there were never any apologies given. Only the promotion of Officer Kowalski in the California Street station, with his Resonant nephew and accompanying sympathies.

Carrie imagines that kindly old Officer Kowalski will dispatch an investigative team to scour the apartment. Every day she sits in Miquel’s studio, jumping at the buzzer to find one of Miquel’s clients. She questions each, but none of them knows anything. They offer condolences, leave numbers to call when Miquel shows up. They assure her he will.

When she tells Waylon, he goes into paranoid mode. He hasn’t talked with Bryce in three days, and he’d taken that as a sign they were breaking up. Carrie wishes Waylon had had a girlfriend before he came out or that he’d dated one boy before Bryce. All his newly outed anxieties collided with his first real relationship anxieties until he was convinced every argument was the end of the world. But Miquel and Bryce both dropping off the map holds deeper significance, and Waylon promises to put his people on it. He’s not the fumbler he was at Bishop. He’s becoming someone new, possibly dangerous. He’s also told Jonathan that Carrie drinks for free, which she appreciates as much as any other help he might give. The fourth day Miquel’s gone, Carrie’s in Vibration, taking advantage of her open tab.

“Dead in here,” she says to Jonathan as Friday evening turns into Friday night and a weekend-size crowd fails to arrive.

“Hayden’s got their big show at the Biograph,” he says, pushing a second whiskey across the bar. The light from his chest glints and plays in the ice cubes. Carrie and Miquel had tickets to see Hayden. Carrie couldn’t bring herself to go alone. She hasn’t talked to Hayden, hasn’t told them Miquel’s missing. “I don’t know why they don’t play shows here.”

“They’d wreck the joint,” Carrie says.

“Might as well. It’s their joint,” Jonathan says.

Down the bar, a woman in her sixties reads a news magazine. A glass of white wine hovers at her shoulder like an advisory angel. In the corner, a couple the age of Carrie’s parents are on a first date. His eyes glow pale blue, and her fingers snake like vines around his wrist and forearm. Carrie sips her drink as their downstairs neighbor, who Miquel refers to as Thought Bubble, enters and comes up to the bar. The word beer flashes over his head like a pink neon sign, the letters in clumsy cursive. Thought Bubble is a beatific presence on the block, a holy idiot. Shackled with an ability that renders his thoughts legible, he’s taught himself to be simple and honest at all times. He looks down the bar at Carrie. Above his head it reads you look sad but also I want to have sex with you. Carrie smiles sadly and shakes her head. Thought Bubble shrugs and returns his attention to his drink. Once again, the word beer strobes over his head.

On the television behind the bar, a reporter stands in front of a wall made of couches and planks and all manner of cast-off items. It looks like they’ve been fused together. There are no captions, but the chyron reads RESONANT STANDOFF IN REVERE, MASS. Carrie tries to pick something up from the reporter’s body language but gets nothing. She returns her attention to her drink.

By nine, she’s more drunk than she wanted to be. She resolves to go back to the California Avenue station house tomorrow. She won’t let herself be charmed by Officer Kowalski’s Polish accent, its echo of Chicagos gone. She will be the angry young girl the situation demands. She will cuff herself to a railing and will not be moved until questions are answered. Tomorrow she will be a better detective, a better girlfriend.

Leaning heavily on the bar, her hands supporting her head, Carrie goes into the Hive.