In front of him the Sunday foot traffic moved warily along, ignoring him now, concerned by the developing scene in the park. If they thought of him it was only to wonder what he was doing over here, outside the protests. Circumstances were evolving and now the sounds seemed charged, and he thought about how crowd density, like personal tragedy, was able to slow time.
He did not agree with the term “predatory.” They had come to him, after all, in search of a dream that was not his to peddle, nor Schwitters’, nor even the senior executives’. The dream was their own and they arrived unbidden, unlured, fantasy-starved.
There was a man moving toward him, walking sideways to keep his eyes on the park. He was in sandals and a grey, fairly clean sweatshirt. He leaned familiarly against the same wall of the storefront where Michael stood.
“This, I will tell you, is about to get ugly,” the man said.
“I don’t know,” Michael said. “Let’s hope not.”
The man put a finger to the green vest and said, “I guess you’re as willing as anyone to get violent if you have to.” Michael didn’t understand. “Not like you guys have much choice though, is it? And now look how far we’ve been pushed. Those kids over there deserve our thanks. If you’ve got your camera, get it ready. My guess is five minutes, maybe less.”
“Nobody wants that.”
The man gave him a pitiful sideways look Michael couldn’t quite bear, so he moved to the edge of the street to see what was happening. The air was jingling with assorted energies he recognized from the bank, just before a signing. There was a helicopter now, hovering and thwupping. The man behind him was yelling but Michael ignored it. Time, again. Slowing. And then, almost without meaning to, he was climbing onto the short fence around the café’s patio. From here he had a clear view to the patch of concrete beneath the monument. It was full with the bodies of protestors all facing to the east, where the police were aligned in obvious clamshell strategy. He saw dogs with them, waiting for command with triangular ears perked.
Michael could try as well as anyone else to plaster his life upon a wall and read with a finger. Isolate moral bankruptcies that were Chinese in origin. He would recall the smell of a Beijing back alleyway, the rasp of buzzing engines and a single unavoidable man wearing an orange hat, and chickens hanging in windows, a man by a doorway open to a descending staircase. Telling Michael and the others, Women here, yeah the best. A video arcade that contained a private club with a dozen or so women and only three men visible, but two of them giants, Europeans, and the third the kind of jittery, manic little fighter who could not speak a word or make a face that did not imply an invitation. Go ahead, the little fighter seemed to say, his eyes laughing.
Everyone had an opinion. Enraged citizen journalists likened it to domestic abuse, the banks feigning trust, doling out such resources they knew full well would never come back. The public would have preferred stagecoach robbery, horseback men whooping from beneath bandannas. Old browning posters of sketchbook faces, torn at the edges.
Someone beneath him was saying get off the fence, get down from there. Without turning, Michael lifted a flap of the vest, like a credential. Then it began – they were moving as a single blue unit. How brief a march, he thought. The screams sang out and the people at his feet were confused. It both was and wasn’t happening before them, couldn’t be, so they pulled out their phones to capture video. The police dogs barked and pulled on their leashes and he understood now that the man in the sweatshirt was right – it was everyone’s dream.
He dropped from the fence into the street and made it several steps into the park before he was tackled from behind. As he fought back he realized it was the man in the gray sweatshirt, and that he was holding something in one hand, and then the jolt rang through Michael’s frame, every muscle flexing before going completely useless.
