time he said the words “the city” it felt like he was uttering a secret password to another world—to a place meant exclusively for him. Over time, the words themselves had taken on a magical significance, and even in this moment, while talking to this stranger, he was swept up in the idea of entry into the city. But the man sat up. He became very stiff, clenching his armrests and puffing his chest.
“The last thing the city needs is more visitors. It’s best you turn around at the next stop.”
Michael was stunned. “That doesn’t seem very fair.”
“Fair? You think that last checkpoint was bad? The north has started doing everything to bring order to the city. Not just anyone can stroll in and pretend he’s always lived there.”
“Since when?”
“You inlanders follow the news? Listen to the radio?” As the man spoke, he tapped out each word on his knee. “The city’s a mess. Full of immigrants, anarchists, and libertines. No real government, everyone doing whatever one wants. They call it autonomy. I call it chaos. It’s about time the northern continent won some representation down here.”
“But isn’t the peninsula autonomous?”
The man shrugged mysteriously, and Michael realized that he hadn’t really paid much attention to the papers. He only glanced at what was happening in the city—art galleries, movie houses, all-night bookshops, concerts.
“Is it dangerous?”
The man laughed. It was so loud people nearby glanced at them. Michael tried to lower his head.
“The city’s anarchists are the problem. Criminals have been in the pockets of the politicians for too long.”
It was Michael’s turn to shrug.
“That’s right,” the man said, grinning. “Just like all the others, ignore all the problems and pretend everything is okay. You got your entry form squared away, right?”
Michael didn’t say anything. The man scoffed.
“Good luck in the city!”
The possibility had never occurred to him that he would not be permitted entry. What would he do then? He couldn’t go back. He had often heard his brothers complaining about the city’s problems and how it prevented them from expanding their coffee business, but he had always reasoned that they were intimidated or scared. Perhaps their truck’s axles could not handle the drive over the mountains? What little he had read in the newspaper never mentioned the situation had turned. The city, as he understood it, was a place where he could finally fit in, and this news prompted him to sit up anxiously, as the curtain in the window shifted and splashed sunlight onto his expressionless face.
The man’s single eye widened. His lip curled as he finally recognized something was different. “Do all inlanders look like you?”
If Michael had real skin, he would have blushed. He would have given away that he didn’t like talking about his appearance or being singled out as representative of inlanders—a term he hated and hoped to leave behind. If he had real skin, he wouldn’t need to say a single word to explain all of this—it would all have been said through his body. But he didn’t.
“I don’t look like them, and they don’t look like me,” Michael said.
The man continued to stare, but a cruel little smile rose on his lips. This confused Michael—after all, the man himself sported an eye patch, so why would he stare as though he didn’t understand? Michael pulled the curtain to hide again in the shade.
“There was an accident,” he finally said. “I didn’t always look this way.”
“So what happened?” The man raised his hand to touch Michael’s face, an echo of the uniformed man reaching toward him. Michael leaned against the wall, realizing how trapped he was in this small space. When the hand, large with filthy fingernails, attempted to reach forward again, Michael panicked and heard himself lash out.
“And your eye? You did all that damage at the funeral office, but what did they do to you?”
The man’s skin rippled with rage, something Michael wished his own could do. Inside was a distant building of some feeling; since his mind was so separated from his body it took time to register what was happening within.
“Or maybe you’re wearing a patch for the fun of it? That’s certainly why I’m this way. Just to be different.” His own voice was trembling. He hated himself when that happened. He identified the feeling inside—he was terrified and completely vulnerable. Overwhelmed, he surrendered his nostrils to the surrounding smells: coffee from his case. Lemon and laurel. Diesel and dirt. Camphor.
“Excuse me!” The woman across from them was now awake, grimacing. A few others in the surrounding rows turned, including the woman who had her lemons taken away. Michael shriveled from all the attention.
The woman, whose blanket smelled of camphor, continued: “Will someone shut this boy up!”
He grabbed his valise and dashed for the back of the bus.
The last row was a single broken chair missing the seat cushion. By propping his case over the armrests, he was able to make his own seat. There he pulled out his ledger and began to draw the face of the one-eyed man. Michael’s hands were clumsy, and most of his drawings, made to calm himself or release any unwanted feelings—a habit that had turned instinctual—would have appeared to most people to be made by a child. He exaggerated whatever he saw. Sketching the man, Michael added—instead of an eye patch—a large egg lodged in the man’s face. This was Michael’s style. Style, he thought, was what made you unique. And to create things, whether on paper or with paint or metal, required style. He drew to develop his style but also to take out his frustrations and anger on his subjects. Acts he could not commit in real life, therefore, were staged and practiced on the page.
He tried to ignore what the man had said. There had to be a way for him to enter the city. Leading up to his departure, he had already begun to imagine himself living there. Perhaps as an artist, perhaps as someone with friends who looked different too. Any situation was better than rotting away inland.
For several hours, he watched the road and changing landscape. The inland was far gone. No inspectors were looking for him. Inside he continued to daydream, while outside the sparse shrubs and hills of sediment began dwindling. Finally, as the sun was setting, the bus descended the highway down the last hill, revealing the first glimpse of the city. Michael’s fear faded, and he tucked his head under the curtain for a better view.
The city rose from the top of the large peninsula, which was shaped like a ragged ellipse, with a bay on the east and the vast ocean to the west. A thin isthmus attached this autonomous southern region to the northern continent, a vast sprawling land filled with a network of cooperatives and city-states. But they were all uniform and had no real presence, Michael had heard, nothing to compare with the dazzling city that overlooked the great eastern bay. Towering buildings with impenetrable glass shimmered with the setting sun, matching the ocean beyond them. What was inside them? The north coast was a sharply rising hill with a cliff that faced the bay, covered by a canopy of trees. In the middle of the trees stood a white lighthouse, overlooking the ships entering and leaving the harbor. Michael took a deep breath, imagining the scent of salt water and secrets buried
