Embedded Files
Side B
The Plumbing
The closest parking garage to the Plumbing was under the Saga convention center. Andrea threw his phone under the driver’s seat, locked his car, and dropped the keys in his pocket.
Julian leaned against the wall next to the elevator. His arms were crossed. The hair was longer than Andrea remembered and the earring was gone, but the eye bags and the backpack over his shoulder were the same.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” Andrea said. “When did you get a car?”
“I took a taxi. I’ve been here for ten minutes.”
“Oh. My bad.”
“No worries.”
Julian hit the “up” button. The elevator hissed.
“Happy New Year,” he said.
“Damn,” Andrea said. “It’s been that long?”
“Since New Year’s Eve.”
“Huh.”
The doors opened. The elevator ceiling was mirrored with squares of crisp, white-toned silver that matched the railing. Two of the walls were blank. The third one was covered in buttons.
Julian reached across Andrea and punched the button for the first floor.
“Thanks for coming,” Andrea said.
“Of course.” Julian flipped open his hand sanitizer. “Want any?”
“Nah. I’m good.”
He shrugged, snapped the bottle shut, and slid it into an inside pocket of his jacket. Andrea watched the floor numbers change.
The lobby was three stories high and echoed like a cave. A floor-to-ceiling window on one end opened onto a view of a floor-to-ceiling window on the other side of the street. At the front desk, a receptionist played skee-ball on her tablet. She didn’t look up.
“Does it sound familiar?” Andrea asked.
“What?”
He pointed at an invisible speaker somewhere above them. “The music.”
“Kinda.”
“Is it from a movie?”
Julian shrugged. The convention center doors slid shut.
No one else was outside. Fences covered in Saga’s logo-print mesh lined the street. The construction equipment behind them was motionless except for the flag flapping on the tower crane. The new buildings’ skeletons were washed in shadow.
Above them, a mile-high Coliseum ring of concrete pipelines spiraled into the sky. The Plumbing ringed the city and held it up from below, but this was the last place Andrea knew about where they could still get out onto the pipes.
The road dead-ended in a fence and a “COMING SOON” billboard.
“Fuck,” Andrea said.
Julian pointed past him. “Through there.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve been here since they closed it.”
“Oh.”
“Come on.”
Julian slid behind a dumpster on the side of the road. Andrea followed him.
The dumpster lid hung half-closed over a pyramid of drywall panels. Between the fence and a wall and past a “PPE REQUIRED” sign, a new asphalt path snaked between beds of fresh mulch. Orange traffic cones were stacked next to a phalanx of burlap-wrapped bushes on the right.
“Is this trespassing?” Andrea asked.
“Since when do you care?”
“You used to care.”
“And? I still came with you.”
“Wearing that stupid hat.”
“It wasn’t stupid.”
“So why aren’t you wearing it now?”
“I lost it,” Julian said. “And none of you ever got caught. So.”
“I told you, they don’t check the cameras.”
“Yeah. You were right.”
The path looped around the back of a parking lot. Julian cut across the chalked-out spaces and pushed through a fence gate. The bottom screeched on the concrete.
“That’s new,” Andrea said.
The pipe in front of them was covered in a white laminate deck. Pristine young grass blanketed a raised median. A line of evenly-spaced potted locust saplings ran down the center.
“Railings,” Andrea said, disgusted.
“I know. It’s terrible.”
“Do they go all the way?”
“No.”
“Thank God.”
Andrea jumped up onto the median and walked along the curb. Julian ducked under his arm and followed him on the deck. The laminate knocked hollowly whenever he moved.
“So how’s grad school?” Andrea asked eventually.
“Pretty good.”
“What are you doing now?”
“Mostly theoretical stuff. Bonding simulations, small-molecule pilot proposals, that kind of stuff.”
“Sick.”
“Yeah.”
“It sounds cool.”
“You have no idea what I’m talking about.”
“So?”
Julian half-smiled. “Thanks.”
“I’m serious.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Andrea lined up his next step along the curb. Julian could only remember seeing him focus like that when he was still losing a race by the last lap, or when he was reading a menu.
Julian glanced over his shoulder. Locust-tree leaves spun in the breeze. He watched one lose its grip on a branch and fly away.
“Are you still working for Stefan?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Mm.”
Andrea jammed both hands into his hoodie pocket. He wobbled dangerously. “At least it’s not more school.”
“Yeah.”
“I like it. It’s…” He shrugged sharply.
“Yeah. I know.”
“I really like it.”
“Good.”
For a second, Andrea stared hard at Julian, but then he shrugged again and lined up another step.
The deck ended. An MWC “No Trespassing” sign was bolted to the strut next to Andrea, above the suicide hotline number. Past it, the pipe was bare concrete. Dirt leaked out the open end of the median.
Andrea jumped off the curb and leaned over the railing. He was already high above street level. Streaks of blue and orange cantilevering wove through the Plumbing below him like twine in a bird’s nest.
Julian was staring at something just above the horizon, running his finger under the chain around his neck. Andrea tried to follow his gaze, but there was nothing there.
Julian unlaced his fingers and straightened up. “You want to keep going?”
“No shit. Just don’t fall.”
Julian snorted.
A wall of struts lined the right side of the pipe. The left was an abyss of open air. The sun slanted through the steel lattice over Julian’s head, splashing him with a gold spotlight every few steps. His sleeve dragged on the wall. Andrea balanced himself on the center of the pipe. Something next to Julian’s ear rattled every time he took a step.
“Don’t fall,” Julian said.
“I won’t.”
“I won’t catch you.”
“Yeah, ‘cause I won’t fall.”
“I hope so.”
“Uh-huh.”
Julian ran his finger under the chain around his neck again.
Andrea squinted. “Is that the..?”
Julian pulled the rest of the necklace out from under his collar.
“Huh,” Andrea said.
Julian shrugged and dropped it back down his shirt.
The wind picked up, whistling between the struts and blowing dust in long waves across the pipe’s surface. When it died down again, the roar of the city behind Andrea and Julian was gone. The only sounds were their shoes scuffing on the concrete and a seagull screeching somewhere below them.
A rain-stained yellow plastic pipe crossed the pipeline in front of them, cutting them off.
Andrea crouched.
“What are you doing?” Julian asked.
“Getting a running start.”
“There are stairs.”
“Fuck stairs.”
Julian laughed. Andrea kicked off, grabbed the edge of a spray paint-coated sign, and braced himself into a steep V between two struts. He reached down. Julian took his hand, and Andrea pulled him up.
They stood on a girder three or four feet above the yellow pipe. Julian shaded his eyes and tried to follow it through the aqueducts.
“Looks like a fucking waterslide,” Andrea said. He grinned suddenly. “Remember that time we brought Alta out here?”
“God, yes.”
“Why the fuck did we do that?”
“Wasn’t my idea. Ask Marino.”
“I should. Haven’t seen that fucker in forever.” Andrea swung down onto the yellow pipe. “He still have that fucking Vespa?” he called up to Julian.
“I don’t know. It’s been a while.”
“We should call him.”
“Yeah.”
Andrea launched himself off the yellow pipe and landed in a crouch. Julian dropped down after him. He brushed rust off his knee.
“He probably does,” Andrea said.
“What?”
“He probably still has the Vespa. You remember when he tried to drive it on the North Side aqueduct?”
Julian shuddered.
“I can rent one for next time we come out here,” Andrea said.
“Fuck off.”
“I won’t even make you pay me back.”
“Good,” Julian said. “I’d have to save up for the funeral.”
“It’d be fine!”
“I’ll put that on your gravestone.”
“Like hell.”
“Or, ‘Watch this!’ ”
“Raia wouldn’t let you.”
“Are you sure?”
“Even she wouldn’t do that.”
“I don’t know. If I was the one who asked her…”
“Why would —”
Julian snorted.
“Shut up!”
“Okay.”
“We’re alone. High up. You could have an accident.”
“She’d never forgive you.”
“No one would ever know. I’d give the eulogy myself.”
“Wow. What an honor.”
“Okay. I wouldn’t give a eulogy. I wouldn’t even go.”
“Hm.”
Julian said it a second too late. Andrea looked away.
They’d walked almost a mile into the Plumbing, but it was only a spiderweb against the blunt mountain of skyscrapers behind it. Even from this far out, Andrea couldn’t tell the city was shaped like a disk. He started walking again.
“Raia got engaged last summer,” he said.
Julian blinked. “Wow.”
“Yeah.”
“When’s the wedding?” Julian asked, after a minute.
“The twenty-ninth.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thanks.”
They ducked under a girder. Andrea pointed to a service ladder.
“Want to go up?”
“Sure.”
The pipeline at the top of the ladder was narrower. The concrete was heavily crosshatched, and a blue railing was bolted to the side. Julian and Andrea both grabbed it.
“Did we ever go this way?” Andrea asked the back of Julian’s head.
“No. I think the ladder used to be folded up.”
“Yeah, I thought I didn’t remember it.”
“This pipe is longer than the old one.”
“Huh. Sick.”
“Right?”
“How much longer?”
Julian pointed down.
“Is that..?”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“Sick. Is my name still there?”
“Yeah. Or it was, last I checked.”
“What about —”
“Your forks? Of course.”
Andrea smiled proudly.
“Who would take them?” Julian asked.
“Well — yeah. Makes sense.”
“Uh-huh.”
“It was a great idea.”
“Do you want to go get them?”
“Nah. I didn’t bring anything to eat. Did you?”
“No.”
A seagull screeched. Andrea cracked his neck.
“When did you say you were down there?”
“Two Wednesdays ago.”
“Oh.”
“Most recently,” Julian said. “Like I said, I’m here a lot.”
“Cool.”
The seagull screeched again. A wing flashed under Andrea’s feet.
“The hot sauce is gone, though,” Julian said.
“Fuck.”
“You could have come back for it.”
“I guess.”
They stopped.
The pipeline dead-ended into a colossal graywater main. A rusty metal platform was riveted to the top. A ladder made of U-shaped sticks of rebar led up to it.
“Is this it?” Andrea asked.
“Yeah.”
He followed Julian up the ladder. At the top, he froze.
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
Andrea had never been this high. The swarms of starlings below them were blue-black snowflakes. The fields tiling the ground were tiny, shards of gold, brown, and ocher slotted together in long, lazy waves. Clouds’ shadows blurred out the edges. The sun flashed on the grass where the wind bent it, and the patches of pine trees on the dunes were invisible in the glare off the sand. Whitecaps glided over the ocean in perfect lines. On the horizon, the sky faded from blue-white, to green, to yellow, to pink, to deep purple-gray.
Julian sat cross-legged on the edge. Andrea crouched next to him.
“When’s the last time you came here?” Julian asked.
“The Plumbing?”
“Yeah.”
“Graduation.”
Julian looked over at him, but Andrea turned around to examine the drift of empty, crushed tea cans behind him. He picked one up, stared at it, and tossed it over the edge. It spun as it fell, flashing brilliant red when it caught the light.
“Think it’ll hit something?” he asked.
“I hope not.”
The rest of the cans rattled in the wind. Julian zipped up his jacket.
Andrea leaned forward over the bottom bar of the railing. “I guess —” He shrugged hard. “Guess I wanted to leave it how it was.”
Julian nodded. “Why’d you want to come back now?”
Andrea shrugged again, still staring at the edge of the sky. Julian messed with a lapel snap on his jacket.
“I guess I thought…”
Julian looked up.
“I mean, why not?” Andrea said, in a different voice.
“Why not.”
Andrea grinned quickly and looked back down over the edge of the platform. Julian pulled two tea cans out of his bag and passed one to him.
“Thanks.”
“No worries.”
Andrea sprawled backwards out of his crouch. Julian let one of his legs swing over the edge.
The wind died down as the sky faded and the last rags of clouds melted in the red light, leaving only the pencil-thin moon. The shadow of the city stretched out to the horizon and disappeared. Individual starlings blurred into floating, twisting scarves. Occasionally, they flew high enough for Andrea and Julian to hear them.
The sky was black and cold. Julian pulled up his collar.
“We should probably go back,” he said.
Andrea sighed. “Yeah.”
For a minute, neither one of them moved.
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