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Pitt slammed the door shut on the van, leaning against it for a second, listening to the familiar creaks.
Not out of anger or anything, though he sure had enough of it, but because the damn thing doesn’t close without a little elbow grease.
He looked at himself in the window, frosted slightly in the September air: getting on in age, Polish and classically pasty, tired but sharp eyes, too much stubble. He looked at his stained work shirt and jeans, his father’s belt around his waist, and wiggled his toes in the uncomfortable impractical loafers his work forced him to wear. Finally, he peered at the blonde woman in the crisp white suit visible behind him.
Nobody wore business suits on this street, much less one that’ll get crap all over it after two steps. She spoke, something like static coming out instead of words.
Pitt blinked. “What?” Damn, he needed a cigarette. He fished out a patch from his shirt pocket instead while she tried again. He’d had a stupid headache all day, seeing things, hearing things at the edges. Probably needed more sleep along with his first cig in 15 years.
“Is this better?” Something was still off about the lady, but Pitt was willing to give her a little grace if she was giving him some.
“Yeah. What’s up? Listen, I’m in the middle of my driveway and you’re… not from here.”
The woman in white - no, the Woman in White, something in Pitt’s mind warned him - stumbled back. Oddly, she smiled, looking around herself. “I’m still here. Oh, wonderful. You’re still young.”
Pitt gave a barking laugh. “Haven’t been young for a long time. I’m one of the older cities here, not that we knew it at the time.” What? Why had he said that?
The Woman in White didn’t seem to think this was odd at all. She even smiled more, somehow, then did the strangest thing of the whole interaction - she reached out and touched his face, turning it to the side. “Oh, yes, there’s even some poison in you, I’ll take you just fine.”
In the span of a few seconds, Pitt experienced a lot of shit.
He saw his city - not just his own Squirrel Hill street, but the City of Steel cupped in the mountain valley. A little spiderweb of bridges and overpasses tying together a city across three major veins. Damaged. Tough. Beautiful. You could see the hills around you most places you stood, with fall turning all those hills a thousand colors. Somehow, in his vision, it was very important that it was pronounced thahsun’.
He saw the three rivers, with their weird angles and the visible difference in waters as the Allegheny and the Monongahela merged. The Point squatting right where they met, small jewels of stadiums and museums dotted around. arahnd.
He saw one massive finger point down, smashing itself by The Strip, burying a seed deep underneath it.
Pitt spat, slapping the Woman’s hand away. Something fluttered at the edge of his view. In his double vision, the downtown financial district, one long street, sliced the finger like a paper cut, its owner hissing and quickly retreating.
The Woman in White looked hurt and confused. Not like she was actually hurt, more like one of his least favorite teachers when he said anything she didn’t agree with. “You’re tougher than I thought.” She squinted. “You know yourself. The others don’t know you.”
Pitt snorted. “Yeah. That’s Pittsburgh. Most exploited major city in the whole damn country.” He was proud of himself for that one, fully got the meaning of it during a union meeting for - what was his job again? That woman must have done something real weird to him. Guiltily remembering some of the solidarity talk from that meeting, he added, “Well, one of them, anyway.” He rubbed his cheek, feeling something off there, and muttered to himself, “fuckin’ jagoff.” He heard the Woman in White gasp in outrage, because of course you don’t say that to somebody’s face, and when Pitt looked around she was gone.
He stood there for a minute, feeling his nicotine patch working, then got on with himself and went inside. Starting that night, he spent the last week of his life in feverish battle.
High school football. Perry vs. Allerdice, Perry home game. The concession stand. Kendra has been selling styrofoam bowls of homemade goods from slow cookers like mad with three other moms. She steps outside the back door and takes a breather. She frowns at a sight under the bleachers - little white feathery strands poking up from discarded cups and other nameless trash. Distantly, two teens seem to be having a tense conversation with a third. She turns back inside and, seized by a mad urge, picks up a waiting bowl of Hannah’s haluski. It’s the good stuff, a thin pool of butter at the bottom of the noodles and cabbage. Probably three ingredients, four if you count the salt. She strides outside and hurries to the teens, throwing the steaming noodles on the bullies. They all stare at the egg noodles as they animate where they fall, doing battle with the feathers, driving them back. None remember that bit later, only the awkward conversation and verbal whooping that follows.
A copy of Pitt, somehow, shoving his van sideways on the Duquesne bridge. He’s got about 100 feet to cross four lanes, and so does everybody else, every morning. It’s slow going, every morning. Somehow, a blonde woman still manages to slam the front of her car into the back of his. Pitt groans. The bridge is gonna be blocked again, and now everybody’s gonna be late. As the woman gets out of her car to yell at him about insurance, she has a predatory grin on her face.
Ms. Davis looks down at the dark backs of her hands, nervously waiting for her turn in the interview room. Who even does in-person interviews anymore for nurses? They call her name, and she glances at the wide table and its occupants. “Yinz are the company?” she asks. All three are somehow identical despite not looking at all alike. The woman in the middle smiles a little too wide, only nodding. Ms. Davis knows she already failed. She doesn’t get the job. Mark, who is half as qualified, but is white and male and used “you”, does.
Pitt looks back and shrugs from the front seat. “Swear to God this happens every freaking day. Typical Duquesne.” The Woman freezes, realizing that her clever blockage put her right in an iconic, vein-like place of mutual spirit, which promptly squeezes.
Three executives look up with identical, placid smiles at the shiny downtown building. None have ever pronounced it dahntahn in their lives, and if they ever did, they were trained out of it. They all wince at the distant sound of kettle drums echoing off of the surrounding buildings, a charming, brash, and sharp sound. High above, one singular window shatters in the newly acquired TOTAL MULTIDIMENSIONAL WAR building. They meet each other’s eyes, nodding. “Hm. Do you think sound ordinances will work as well as they did in New Orleans?”
Mitchell has a Primanti’s sandwich in his stomach, suffusing him like a blessing. His doctor tells him it should be his last. The fat in the fries, as much as it tastes like tradition, is killing him.
A largemouth bass swims up the Ohio. A speedboat goes by above it. Forty years ago, the river would have been so full of chemical soup, both fish and motorist would be dead by now. But the city gave up its favorite poisons and reshaped itself, and has stubbornly suffered the consequences since. Andrew Carnegie (Car-NAY-gee in this place as the man said it himself) built this city, and his steel conglomerate brought money and asthma for a hundred years. On TV, the politician parrots, “Pittsburgh, not Paris!” As if he knows what’s good for it.
Rl’yeh swims up the Ohio river, the Duquesne car traffic, and the Strip foot traffic. She is an organic city, and she can adapt. She gets netted by a puzzling symbol of power - a sweater knitted around her unawares. The original sweaterbombs. Rest in Peace, Mister Rogers. We’re not about to be good neighbors, please forgive us. Pitt grabs her arm and- did he just bite her!?
The city of Pittsburgh grins a spiteful cheshire smile. His teeth are the Ft. Pitt bridge’s crisscrossed steel beams. They are red with blood, or rust. Black-and-gold war paint adorns his cheeks, and his image is mirrored in many flat colors in the iconic pop style of its most famous artist. The white tendrils of the foreign city wriggle in his stomach, doing battle with pirogi and haluski and fries on rye sandwiches. The tendrils are leaching through, and both cities know that Pittsburgh will die half-born.
Pitt closes his eyes and pictures his great-grandfather, who died in a steel mill like his father before him died in a mine, and smiles. This city knows poison and cancer and devil’s bargains well. Its patron saint Carnegie built bridges and museums and libraries and a financial empire crossing a continent from the fruits of Pennsylvania steel mill runoff. Pittsburgh reaches into its tired heart and spins one last magic and tears blood money from Rl’yeh, ingesting and accepting Rl’yeh’s killing blow. A mad hope inspires him, shaping its white buildings into a nearly as labyrinthine medical industry. One last tool that may let him live to see the Enemy’s death at another city’s hand. That night, the would-be avatar of Pittsburgh is rushed in an ambulance for a collapsed lung, tendrils of cancer striking him early.