The Twenty-Seventh City. Jonathan Franzen

11:00. The last Lockwood Avenue bus to U-City came at 12:05. She could see Duane any night she wanted to, and she liked it better at night, when she could see herself, a white semi-reflection in the bus window staring into her face and unmoved by the streetlights and neon floating through her. Duane was waiting at the bus stop, his scarf under his chin, a lock of hair above his eyebrows. He shook his head. He could never believe she was actually on the bus.

      “… Amy Lowell and Ezra Pound, who were both profound influences on Williams.”

      “Bow bow bow,” said Archie, snatching at an imaginary bug in the air.

      “Archie?” Sonnenfeld was getting mad. The pitch of his voice had risen.

      Janice Jones had fallen asleep.

      Luisa looked down at the copies on her desk, THE RED WHEELBARROW. So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow glazed with water beside the white chickens. That was easy enough. She liked short poems. She went on to the next one and, finding it just as easy, kept reading. She didn’t stop until she sensed an unanswered question hanging in the air. Sonnenfeld had asked them something. She ran the preceding seconds through her memory and heard, from afar, “What was imagism?”

      Without raising her hand she called out, “Free verse, strong images that appeal directly to the emotions.”

      “What did you say to me?”

      She looked up with a start. Sonnenfeld had gotten down from his desk. He wasn’t talking to her. He was talking to Archie. He hadn’t even heard her answer. Archie was enlarging the gray dot, smiling.

      “What did you say?”

      “Fag,” Archie said.

      “I didn’t hear you.”

      Luisa drove her nails into her palms and stared at her desk, the way everyone else was staring. She tried to force the blush back out of her cheeks. What an idiot she was. The halls had grown quiet for a moment. Sonnenfeld was walking down the aisle. She heard the unhurried scratching of Archie’s pencil. Then a scuffle, the rumble of a desk’s metal feet on linoleum, the plink of a pencil. She stole a glance. Sonnenfeld had grabbed Archie by the collar and was hauling him towards the door. He pushed him out and followed him. From the hall, the class heard, “What’d you call me?”

      There was a murmur from Archie.

      “What?”

      “Fag.”

      “What, nigger?”

      “Fag.”

      “Nigger!”

      FAG!

      NIGGER!

      It stopped. It had to. Sonnenfeld was dragging Archie down to the vice-principal’s office. Still feeling the pressure of attention on her, Luisa laid her cheek on her desk and shut her eyes. Outside, a pep parade was approaching to the tune of “Old Wisconsin.”

       On with Webster, on with Webster Fight fight fight fight fight

      The trumpeter had to slur and blurt to keep up with the singers. As the group passed the door, Luisa heard footsteps. Some of the class was deserting. She heard a match struck and raised her head. Janice Jones was lighting a cigarette.

      Tonight Luisa was supposedly going to the Bonfire and then staying over at Stacy’s. Actually she was going out to dinner with Duane and spending the night with him. There had been a lot of this supposedly-actually in the last three weeks. On her birthday it had gotten complicated. Stacy had even called Luisa’s mother for suggestions about what kind of breakfast and what kind of presents. Stacy had a mother like Duane’s, the convenient sort of parent who worked full-time and who’d believe there had been a party in her house even if there hadn’t been. Luisa wasn’t as much afraid of getting caught as she was sure that one of these weeks, in her tiredness, she’d forget which side of the window she was on and do something stupid at home, like French-kissing her mother or calling her father “Baby.” She could feel the impatience inside her. Why don’t people who like each other kiss all the time? Why do people have to lie? She was feeling more honest and acting less honest. It was a dangerous mixture, like gasoline and wine, like fever and chills. She still had a cold, sort of a permanent cold, the sense that none of the things that used to matter mattered anymore. She could do whatever she wanted. She could just say: “Give me a cigarette.”

      Janice Jones looked astonished. “They’re menthol.”

      Luisa shrugged. When the match was held she inhaled lightly to keep from coughing. To her relief the smoke was mild, like a breath of mothballs. Janice Jones folded up her poems and stuffed them roughly into her purse. She looked at Luisa. “Bye,” she said. It was the friendliest she’d ever been.

      “See you.” Drawing on the cigarette, Luisa felt almost as cool as Janice. Unfortunately the only two kids left in the room to appreciate her now were Alice Bunyan, who sketched horses during class, and Jenny Brown, who had large sad eyes and a lisp, wore overalls, and never knew the answers. Neither cared about Luisa. She closed her eyes. She felt a tiny breeze, a feathery impact on her stomach—the ash breaking loose. She opened her eyes.

      Sonnenfeld.

      He was leaning with both hands on the front desk in her row. He was staring at her. “May I ask what you’re doing?”

      She didn’t answer. She dropped the cigarette and smashed it with her heel. Sonnenfeld laid a green slip on her desk. Smokig i classmm. “Sorry,” he said coldly. “I’d expected more from you.”

      She gathered her books and shouldered her purse. Somehow her body couldn’t believe it was leaving. The vice-principal could suspend her for three days for smoking, and barring that, a call to her parents was virtually assured. At the door she stopped and looked into the hall. There were ruptured oranges on the floor, and construction-paper artwork on the doors of lockers belonging to members of the football team. The pep club had drawn crude portraits of each member and given him a slogan. #65 WILLY FISHER “DR. MEAN GUY.” The lockers looked like tombs. Luisa turned back uncertainly to Sonnenfeld.

      He was seated on his desk with a book in his hand. He licked a finger, turned a page, and addressed his two remaining students. “So much—depends,” he said.

      “Just leave those spaces blank, White.”

      “Done. What do we say? Gateway Arch?” RC’s fingers played the keys. Gateway Arch. “Address?”

      “Forget the address.”

      “Shot in the leg, right?”

      “Very funny. Southern leg, eastern face, hit by automatic fire.”

      … automatic fire. “Means?” RC said.

      “High-powered automatic rifle firing steel bullets.”

      … steel bullets.

      “Object of attack unknown. Distinctive feature: pattern of dents traced the letters O and W. Rest of that column blank.”

      … letters O and W. “Now, I know the suspects,” RC said.

      “Shut up, White. I’m dictating. Understand? Name unknown, sex male, height five-ten to six-two, everything else unknown.”

      Unknown. Unknown. Unknown.

      “Bottom of the page. Three-sixteen a.m., November et cetera, Donald R. Colfax of Gateway Security Systems, 1360 DeBaliviere, telephone three three six, one one seven one—reported the sound of gunfire near the southern end of the Arch. New paragraph. Three-eighteen a.m., Officers Dominick Luzzi and Robert Driscoll—double z-i, White—dispatched to the scene by radio. New paragraph. Three-twenty a.m., Colfax stated that upon hearing the gunfire he hastened in that direction from his desk in the northern underground lobby of the Arch.”

      “Hastened” RC said, “in the direction of a machine gun?”

      “Appearing