The Bewildered. Peter Rock
kick-flips, the sharp crack of her board’s tail on the metal floor echoing off the walls. The numbers above the buttons counted the elevator’s rise, the feet above sea-level. The tunnel was at 450 feet, and they climbed; the doors opened at 693 feet. They stepped out, surrounded by the zoo parking lot and the signs for the Washington Park shuttle, which didn’t run this late. Lamps cast circles of light, here and there, illumination for security—exactly what they hoped to avoid.
They moved silently; they did not skate; not yet. A double thickness of ten foot chainlink fence, with barbed wire on top, stretched up from the entrance gate- a hundred feet away. The three moved closer, up to the right. Tossing their skateboards over, whispering, they went under the first fence, climbed the second—Kayla tapping the metal NO TRESPASSING sign with her fingernails—and slid down a slope of ground cover, tangled bushes. Regrouping, they climbed up through more of the same undergrowth, staying low and quiet, then pulled themselves up through the supports of a long wooden deck, and atop it, helping each other.
Here they stood, on the deck, near the mountain goats—asleep, white and shaggy, raising their bearded, horned heads at the sound of the whispered voices, the dark shapes of the three hurrying past.
“Hey, boys,” Chris said, waving. “We’re back.”
“Quiet,” Leon said.
When they reached the asphalt, they gently, quietly set down their boards. They paused for a moment, looking down the slope, the whole zoo below them. They could already smell the animals; low calls and night cries rose here and there.
“We have to remember to time it,” Kayla said. Her round watch face flashed at her wrist, moonlight catching there. “How long did it take, last time?”
“Eight minutes through the zoo,” Leon said. “Twenty to downtown.”
With that, he was gone, out ahead, the sole of his right foot flashing—the straight stripe of duct tape, there—and then both feet on the board, his body down in a tuck, his left arm angled straight out in front and his palm facing down, his hand cutting the air and streaming it over him.
“Go ahead,” Chris said to Kayla. “I’ll catch up.”
“Right,” she said. “Try.”
She pushed off and Chris followed, keeping her in sight. They went slow at first, the bumps still there, the lighter stones in the asphalt blurring together into straight lines as the warm air shifted cool and the ground went smooth. All three liked the speed, though none so well as Kayla, who could control it best. They shot across the bridge, the dull empty tracks of the miniature zoo train below, the wind in their ears, their eyes going teary. No one else did this; no one would think of it. Here was the first sharp right into an S turn—Kayla ahead leaning into it, dragging her gloved fingertips along the ground—and then the swooping left under a low arch, out past the sea lion pools and the otters, and under another arch, underground—into a cave, Chris holding his breath because it was almost like being underwater, the edges of the dark glass walls lost and the shadowy fish suspended, hanging, swimming around him and then here was the stretch of carpet under his wheels, slowing him with its friction that had to be anticipated, leaning back, Kayla already off it, and then asphalt again and his wheels loose as he shot past the elephant seals, rising so wise and fluent like huge black ghosts on a flickering white movie screen, watching, waving flippers and tails, huge enough to swallow three of him—and he was out, cool, unfishy air rushing past as he swooped around the penguin house and began to lose speed on the flats (this was a dangerous section, exposed and slow; the second time they’d done this a night watchman, some kind of security person, had run out, emerging near the Bearwalk Cafe, but by the time he got to where Kayla had been she was fifty yards past him, and he was facing the wrong way, watching her go, as Leon and Chris passed on either side, howling as they swept by, toward the gibbons) and had to start pumping hard to maintain momentum. He could hear Leon’s foot, and Kayla’s, their feet slapping in syncopation as they shot past the gibbons in their tall cages, up all night on manila ropes. The sound of wheels startled, roused the bears, off to the left. The air was thick with the smells of manure and hay and strange animal musks. Bamboo and ferns and cool, broad-leafed plants slipped by, slick against his bare arms. His legs ached, but the next long slope was coming, right after the Asian elephant building, and then gravity again letting loose, just enough—
—swooping down under the tall totem pole with its arms outstretched, all the frightening heads in profile, piled up, and he rocketed past the Alaskan Tundra, the slow musk ox and the hidden grizzly bear and the ragged, halfhearted gaunt wolves howling now. There was no better feeling, no name for it, no better sound, and the best was to be together, the three of them—Chris, Kayla, Leon—the points of a triangle, bending and twisting the sides, the corners and angles; he liked to be last, to keep the other two in sight, and to imagine how at the same time all the snakes were winding themselves tighter, the jaguars and tigers pacing, snapping through liquid turns like his own, and the crocodiles’ slitted yellow eyes staring beneath lukewarm water, and the bad-tempered zebra, the blue-tongued giraffe turning its long neck in wonder.
They skated, their twelve wheels roaring. There was only the moon overhead, the animals above them, the city below. No one else did this; no one would think of it. And ahead Chris could see a strange light in the sky. Glaring, shining, dead ahead, calling them in. He watched as Leon, still out in front, stood up from his crouch, his body straight but his trucks wobbling, the board unsteady beneath him at that speed. Leon’s head turned and his face flashed sideways in the moonlight—what was he looking at? not where he was going—and his wheels caught something or he simply lost it. His body catapulted and skidded on one side, his board kicked back, spinning so Kayla barely missed it, so Chris had to swerve around it.
Both shot by where Leon lay motionless, dark against the asphalt. Kayla leaned back, put her gloves down and slid sideways, her wheels screeching, her body only inches above the ground. Chris rode off the shoulder, leaning against the bite of the gravel, the friction, but it was too much and he was jerked loose, forward, his board lost behind him and his feet still underneath, trying to catch up before he went down, arms windmilling, feet slapping as he ran up the side of a hill, saved like a runaway truck, helmet rattling on his head, his heart and breath rattling, too, as he turned, searching back toward Leon, toward the light.
Kayla had already reached Leon, who was trying to climb a fence, to get a better view. The left side of his jeans was shredded, the sleeve of his flannel shirt completely gone. Blood there, and in the moonlight the grit visible, dark asphalt in the wound. He didn’t seem to notice.
“Are you in some kind of shock?” Kayla was saying. “What is your deal?”
She and Chris tried to climb up, to be at the same level as Leon, to talk to his face, to see what he was seeing. He didn’t seem to hear them.
Highway 26, the Sunset Highway, stretched out below, a few car headlights climbing. Closer, fifty feet away from the three, a workman stood in a cherrypicker, bright floodlights fixed on him from below. The man was working on the electrical line. He wore a yellow helmet, and a black, rubber outfit, thick safety gloves. He adjusted the lines with a long-handled pole, assorted pincers and attachments on its end. The crane that held the cherrypicker aloft groaned, moving the man higher and lower when he gave hand signals. A spark kicked out, fell, disappeared. Leon clung to the fence, watching, transfixed.
“Listen,” Kayla said. “We can’t stay here. We’ll be caught. We’ve got to get through the fence, over there, then down to the streets.” She pointed toward the enclosure of the tree kangaroos, where the fence was bent out.
Leon looked over at her, as if awakening. He turned and smiled at Chris, then began to climb down.
“Are you all right?” Chris said. “Can you skate?”
“Of course I can skate,” he said.
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