Steven Gould - Peaches For Mad Molly.pdf

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PEACHES FOR MAD
MOLLY
Steven Gould
Sometime during the night the wind pulled a one-pointer off the west face of the building up around the
630thfloor. I heard him screaming as he went by, very loud, like this was his last chance to voice an
opinion, but it was all so sudden that he didn’t know what it was. Then he hit a microwave relay off 542
... hard, and the chance was gone. Chunks of him landed in Buffalo Bayou forty-five seconds later.
The alligators probably liked that.
I don’t know if his purchase failed or his rope broke or if the sucker just couldn’t tie a decent knot. He
pissed me off though, because I couldn’t get back to sleep until I’d checked all four of my belay points,
the ropes, and the knots. Now if he’d fallen without expressing himself, maybe?
No, I would have heard the noise as he splattered through the rods of the antennae.
Stupid one-pointer.
The next morning I woke up a lot earlier than usual because someone was plucking one of my ropes,
adagio, thrum, thrum, like the second movement of Ludwig’s seventh. It was Mad Molly.
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”You awake, Bruce?” she asked.
I groaned. “I am now. “ My name is not Bruce. Molly, for some reason, calls everyone Bruce. “Shto
etta, Molly?”
She was crouched on a roughing point, one of the meter cubes sticking out of the tower face to induce
the micro-turbulence boundary layer. She was dressed in a brightly flowered scarlet kimono, livid green
bermuda shorts, a sweatshirt, and tabi socks. Her belay line, bright orange against the gray building,
stretched from around the corner to Molly’s person where it vanished beneath her kimono, like a snake
hiding its head.
”I got a batch to go to the Bruce, Bruce.”
I turned and looked down. There was a damp wind in my face. Some low clouds had come in overnight,
hiding the ground, but the tower’s shadow stretched a long ways across the fluffy stuff below. “Jeeze,
Molly. You know the Bruce won’t be on shift for another hour.” Damn, she had me doing it! “Oh, hell.
I’ll be over after I get dressed.”
She blinked twice. Her eyes were black chips of stone in a face so seamed and browned by the sun that
it was hard to tell her age. “Okay, Bruce,” she said, then stood abruptly and flung herself off the cube.
She dropped maybe five meters before her rope tightened her fall into an arc that swung her down and
around the corner.
I let out my breath. She’s not called Mad Molly for nothing.
I dressed, drank the water out of my catch basin, urinated on the clouds (seems only fair) and rolled up
my bag.
Between the direct sunlight and the stuff bouncing off the clouds below the south face was blinding. I put
my shades on at the corner.
Molly’s nest, like a mud dauber’s, hung from an industrial exhaust vent off the 611thfloor. It was woven,
sewed, tucked, patched, welded, snapped, zipped, and
tied into creation. It looked like a wasp’s nest on a piece of chrome. It did not blend in.
Her pigeon coop, about two floors lower down, blended in even less. It was made of paper, sheet
plastic, wire, and it was speckled with pigeon droppings. It was where it was because only a fool lives
directly under under defecating birds, and Molly, while mad, was not stupid.
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Molly was crouched in the doorway of her nest balanced on her feet like one of her pigeons. She was
staring out at nothing and muttering angrily to herself.
”What’s wrong, Molly? Didn’t you sleep okay?”
She glared at me. “That damn Bruce got another three of my birds yesterday.”
I hooked my bag onto a beaner and hung it under her house. “What Bruce, Molly? That red tailed
hawk?”
”Yeah, that Bruce. Then the other Bruce pops off last night and wakes me up so I can’t get back to
sleep because I’m listening for that damn hawk. “ She backed into her nest to let me in.
”Hawks don’t hunt at night, Molly.”
She flapped her arms. “So? Like maybe the vicious, son-of-a-bitchin’ Bruce gets into the coop? He
could kill half my birds in one night!” She started coiling one of her ropes, pulling the line with short, angry
jerks. “I don’t know if it’s worth it anymore, Bruce. It’s hot in the summer. It’s freezing in the winter. The
Babs are always hassling me instead of the Howlers, the Howlers keep hassling me for free birds or
they’ll cut me loose one night. I can’t cook on cloudy days unless I want to pay an arm and a leg for fuel.
I can’t get fresh fruit or vegetables. That crazy social worker who’s afraid of heights comes by and asks
if he can help me. I say, ‘Yeah, get me some fresh fruit.’ He brings me applications for readmittance!
God, I’d kill for a fresh peach! I’d be better off back in the house!”
I shrugged. “Maybe you would, Molly. After all, you’re getting on in years.”
”Fat lot you know, Bruce! You crazy or something? Trade this view for six walls? Breathe that stale stuff
they got in there? Give up my birds? Give up my freedom? Shit, Bruce, who the hell’s side are you on
anyway?”
I laughed. “Yours, Molly.”
She started wrapping the pigeons and swearing under her breath.
I looked at Molly’s clippings, bits of faded newsprint stuck to the wall of the tower itself. By the light
coming through some of the plastic sheeting in the roof, I saw a picture of Molly onMt.McKinley dated
twenty years before. An article about her second attempt on Everest. Stories about her climbing buildings
inNew York ,Chicago , andL.A. I looked closer at one that talked about her climbing the south face ofEl
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Capitan on her fourteenth birthday. It had the date.
I looked twice and tried to remember what day of the month it was. I had to count backwards in my
head to be sure.
Tomorrow was Mad Molly’s birthday.
The Bruce in question was Murry Zapata, outdoor rec guard of the south balcony on the 480thfloor.
This meant I had to take the birds down 131 stories, or a little over half a kilometer. And then climb
back.
Even on the face of Le Bab Tower, with a roughing cube or vent or external rail every meter or so, this
is a serious climb. Molly’s pigeons alone were not worth the trip, so I dropped five floors and went to
see Lenny.
It’s a real pain to climb around Lenny’s because nearly every horizontal surface has a plant box or pot
on it. So I rappeled down even with him and shouted over to where he was fiddling with a clump of
fennel.
”Hey, Lenny. I’m making a run. You got anything for Murry?”
He straightened up. “Yeah, wait a sec.” He was wearing shorts and his climbing harness and nothing
else. He was brown all over. If I did that sort of thing I’d be a melanoma farm.
Lenny climbed down to his tent and disappeared inside. I worked my way over there, avoiding the
plants. I smelled dirt, a rare smell up here. It was an odor rich
and textured. It kicked in memories of freshly plowed fields or newly dug graves. When I got to Lenny’s
tent, he came out with a bag.
”What’cha got,” I asked.
He shrugged. “Garlic, cumin, and anise. The weights are marked on the outside. Murry should have no
trouble moving it. The Chicanos can’t get enough of the garlic. Tell Murry that I’ll have some of those tiny
muy caliente chilis for him next week.”
”Got it.”
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”By the way, Fran said yesterday to tell you she has some daisies ready to go down.”
”Check. You ever grow any fruit, Lenny?”
”On these little ledges? I thought about getting a dwarf orange once but decided against it. I grow dew
berries but none of them are ripe right now. No way I could grow trees. Last year I grew some
cantaloupe but that’s too much trouble. You need a bigger bed than I like.”
”Oh, well. It was a thought.” I added his bag to the pigeons in my pack. “I’ll probably be late getting
back.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I know. Better you than me, though. Last time I went, the Howlers stole all MY
tomatoes. Watch out down below. The Howlers are claiming the entire circumference from 520 to 530.”
”Oh, yeah? Just so they don’t interfere with my right of eminent domain.”
He shrugged. “Just be careful. I don’t care if they want a cut. Like maybe a clump of garlic.”
I blinked. “Nobody cuts my cargo. Nobody.”
”Not even Dactyl?”
”Dactyl’s never bothered me. He’s just a kid.”
Lenny shrugged. “He’s sent his share down. You get yourself pushed off and we’ll have to find someone
else to do the runs. Just be careful.”
”Careful is what I do best.”
Fran lived around the corner, on the east face. She grew flowers, took in sewing, and did laundry. When
she had the daylight for her solar panel, she watched TV.
”Why don’t you live inside, Fran. You could watch TV twenty-four hours a day.”
She grinned at me, a not unpleasant event. “Nah. Then I’d pork up to about a hundred kilos eating that
syntha crap and not getting any exercise and I’d have to have a permit to grow even one flower in my
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