Magnetite Tonight (pt 1).

It is 1977 and you, Dennis Smothers, have just taken a hell of a spill off of your bike; there’s a bleeding cut across your ankle and another on your knee bleeding more; and just as you notice the disturbed insect hill underneath you, furious red ants are boiling out of it and biting the hell out of you. You crabwalk backward onto the street, slapping them to death, looking for help but there’s nobody living on this dead-end street yet so you limp to your bike and stand it up. One of the pedals has broken off and the front wheel is so bent there’s no way you can ride it home

You leave it propped against a stacked block of two-by-fours wrapped in plastic, and unsure of what else to do start walking. The street curves into a leftover stand of pine woods – most of them have been cut down to make room for houses under construction here, some framed with their bones in place, great triple-story mansions with long three-car garages, and the view from here is of the best part of the Smoke River, upstream from the mill and still as blue as fine china. Some of them on the opposite side of the street are almost completed and ready to move in, and their yards are stacked with the finishing touches: pallets of cobblestone for the road, stacks of ornate front doors, the tangle of ironwork lampposts, the sod rolls of expensive grass. This is a kingdom, you think; people like you live by the mill on Whisper Street where the train still wakes you up three times a night but here you could be a king and probably do anything you want.

The closest house – one of nearly done – has its doors wide open, and you can’t help yourself, you walk up the brick steps to the cupola and stick your head inside to see uncarpeted floors and unfinished woods stairs that climb unpainted walls written on in electrician’s chalk. A chandelier encased in bubble wrap lies at an angle on the floor; you stare at it a long, long time, unable to help but wonder what it would be like, to be in the land it represents, being that person who rightfully stood beneath it.

Voices are coming from the end of the long middle hallway – before you can run they come into view, drawing up short. She is startlingly pale, black hair swept over one shoulder; he is unhealthy thin, joints like swollen knobs, and is missing his eyebrows. No one moves. You’re bleeding, she says finally, looking down at your ankle. I think there might be some toilet paper the builders left in the bathroom. She beckons for you to follow her, walking on her toes as if she weighs nothing; the pair of them stand in the doorway observing as you carefully wipe grit out of your wounds.

He’s Jay, she says, pointing towards her companion. I’m Katrina. Who are you?

You tell her, and when you’re done cleaning up she asks if you want to see something interesting; Jay shuffles out of the way while you hop after her, stopping at the door of a room draped in gloom; you hear a deep whirring noise and see sluggish bees crawling on the ceiling, and realize that the shadowy lump of a thing in the corner of the room is a hive. They won’t hurt you, Katrina says, holding her hands out so that bees can land on her palms; they turn in circles before taking flight, exiting through a window. You feel soft brushes on your cheeks and with great difficulty force yourself still as bees crawl across your face, droning before they fly off.

Leading the way back outside, Jay offers to retrieve your bike for you, hurrying away before you can tell him there’s no need; he walks with shoulders slumped, constantly scratching at his body. He gets nervous, Katrina tells you. He can’t help it so please be nice to him.

Jay wrestles your bike into her hatchback; on the way home they ask you questions and you answer with lies. You have her let you out at the bank, agreeing to meet them tomorrow; they both extend their pinkies and thumbs and waggle their hands at you. It means Hang Loose, Katrina tells him. I went to Hawaii last year and everybody does it.

You copy them, doing it even after they are long out of sight, and then you keep riding in the dark ten more blocks, the houses souring all around you as you ride home, the chipped paint and broken windows and dead lawns and cracked foundations spreading over this part of the city like a bruise over the skin of an apple, until you reach the mill and Whisper Street and the taste of coal in the air and bottles in the street, and until you fall asleep that night you think of that chandelier and the way that it shined.