believed for the last ten years of her life that I and all the rest of her relatives were trying to kill her.
Two blocks ahead, a woman turned the corner and headed in my direction. It was Deirdre.
I bolted into the doorway of an abandoned storefront. Why I was hiding, I couldn’t say. Deirdre still had all of my childhood photos (assuming she hadn’t burned them). I should have confronted her, maybe twisted her little arm behind her back until she told me where they were. Instead I did my best to fold into the crack between the door and the boarded-up window.
What had she done with my photos? Sometimes I still lay awake wondering. There had been no cut-up pile greeting me when I finally built up the nerve to use my key to sneak into her place while she was out. No charred corners mixed with the ashes in the fireplace (showing a tantalizing hint of a sneaker; the ornament-laden branches of a Christmas tree…). They were just gone. Did she toss them in a dumpster? Did she still have them? I missed them to my bones. I had no proof now, that I had a past, that I’d once been a child. I never would have guessed it would hurt so much to lose them. Evidently Deirdre had.
Deirdre strutted past, oblivious to my cowering form. I was not afraid of her, I told myself. I just didn’t want to deal with her. I waited a couple of minutes, then went on my way, still thinking about her.
At home I found Colin and Jeannie parked in front of the TV, watching the news. We might as well ditch the remote—our TV was always tuned to MSNBC. With times so dark there was always something new, always people dying. Egypt was systematically exterminating the population of the rest of Northern Africa. Why? Because the population of Northern Africa ate. Fewer people meant less competition for food and energy, and Egypt had the biggest guns. Bad as it was in the U.S., some other parts of the world were turning into nothing but giant concentration camps and killing fields. It was both mesmerizing and depressing.
I took a deep breath and turned away from the TV. I would have liked to go to sleep, but Colin and Jeannie were sitting on my bed watching TV, so I went into their room to do a little bookkeeping for the store.
“I have to say, Cortez was a natural,” Ange said. “He’d stop to look at a table of sorry-looking pistols, then turn and bump into some guy in an expensive suit, grabbing the guy’s shoulders like he was steadying himself. The guy didn’t even flinch from the stick. He was slapping people on the back, even pulled it off with a couple of cops and soldiers.”
Uzi tugged on his leash, panting and wagging his tail, trying to pull Ange across the street toward Jackson Square and its Live Oaks. “Uzi, no,” Ange said, as if that would faze him. He lived to pee on those massive trunks.
“You want me to take a turn?” I offered, knowing she didn’t. Ange shook her head. “Are we talking regular U.S. soldiers from Fort Stewart, or those private mercenary guys?” I asked.
“Regular. He’s not suicidal.”
There were more people in the park than usual. More adults, anyway. The kids were always there, playing their incomprehensible game, jumping among big colored dots laid along the squares and sidewalks, alternately frowning in concentration and laughing like hell, dousing each other with industrial-strength water guns, rolling dice the size of baseballs. Now there were also groups of adults, sitting in circles, cooking in pots on open fires, laughing their heads off. They were infected with Doctor Happy.
Doctor Happy had made the local evening news three days after Chair and Sebastian’s infection party. They called it a strange new virus that results in “disorientation, amotivation, and giddiness.” Sebastian had said the government wasn’t going to like this virus at all. Authoritarian types are uncomfortable with people altering their consciousness—they’d rather see them vomit blood.
An ultralight helicopter buzzed overhead, casting a drifting shadow on the street. Probably some rich jerk going for a martini at Rooftop Elysium.
“What I wouldn’t give for a rocket launcher,” Ange said, her neck craned.
“Maybe you’ll have one of your own once you get your Ph.D.,” I laughed. “At the very least you’ll be able to live in a gated community.”
Ange glared at me. “I’d never become one of them. I’d live in a better place, sure, but never in one of those obnoxious gated fortresses.” Ange kicked a soda can out of her way. “It doesn’t matter anyway, because I’m not getting my Ph.D.”
I stopped in my tracks. “What?”
She let her head loll back until she was staring at the sky. “I had that meeting with Charles, my thesis advisor. A
“Typical,” I muttered. The Pink House was a silk tablecloth, sniff- the-wine-cork place.
“Yeah. It was his usual shit—the grope-hug greeting, reaching over to brush my hair out of my eyes, all the sexual innuendo crap. I asked if we could schedule my defense, and he said no, he thinks I need to run another fucking study. Then he pulls out his appointment calendar and says his wife will be out of town the first half of next week, and why don’t I come over to his place Tuesday night for dinner, to discuss the new study?”
Uzi strained hard on his leash, eager to get moving. We continued walking.
“It suddenly hit me that he’s not going to let me defend my dissertation until I let him fuck me.” She started to say something else but choked up. I waited as she took a few deep breaths and got herself under control. “He’s going to throw one obstacle after another in front of me, make me sit through a thousand excruciating dinners, because that way he has power over me.”
A Jumpy-Jump lounged on a stoop up ahead, watching us approach. Watching Ange, really. He was dressed in a mock-mailman outfit, the “U.S. Mail” shoulder patches executed in ornate calligraphy.
“For four years I’ve been dreaming of walking across that stage, with my whole family—even my bitch grandmother—watching. What do you think of your crank-addict loser, drug-rehab dropout, gypsy granddaughter now, you old bag? I wouldn’t even have to say it out loud. Probably none of them but my mom and Cory would actually show up, but the fantasy works better when they’re all sitting in a row on those metal folding chairs, watching.”
“That’s a big dog for such a little peanut,” the Jumpy-Jump said as we drew near. We kept our pace steady. I’d seen the guy around—he was ethnic, maybe East Indian. Long braided hair. He spoke with the singsong accent that Jumpy-Jumps evidently had invented out of thin air.
“Where are you two and your big dog so urgently needed?” He stood lazily, not exactly blocking the sidewalk, but impeding it. Ange veered into the street, cutting a wide path around him, and I followed her lead.
“I’m talking to you, don’t disappear me,” he said. He moved to block our path.
Uzi snarled and lunged. Ange held his leash tight; the Jumpy-Jump leaped clear of Uzi’s snapping teeth.
A heartbeat later, there were blades all over the Jumpy-Jump, jutting from his belt, his boots. He clutched what looked like machetes in both fists. “You think your big dog can protect you?” There was blood and a ragged gash on his thumb—Uzi had just caught his retreating hand.
I grabbed the leash and helped Ange drag Uzi backward. He was barking and snapping, scrabbling to get at the man. We just kept pulling, retreating the way we’d come, until Uzi finally relented and reversed direction as well.
“I can fuck you any time I want, Little Peanut,” the Jumpy-Jump shouted at our backs. “Right here on the daylight street. Strip off your false security and live in constant fear, where you belong.”
We ran five blocks before slowing.
“I hate that I can’t walk the streets without being afraid. I hate it,” Ange hissed.
“I know,” I said. My heart was still thumping like mad. “What’s wrong with those people? And what happened to the police? Or even the Civil Defense? What happened to their whole thing about taking back the streets?”
“Now they all just look out for themselves,” Ange said. “Just like Charles.”
A street sweeper rumbled along a side street, churning up plywood and cardboard shelters, its whooping alarm warning tenants to get clear or be swept up with their houses.
“Have you complained to the Department Chair about him?”
Ange nodded. “I was there this morning. She says there’s nothing she can do, that I should switch advisors. But Charles is the only botanical biotech person left on the faculty, so I’d have to start my dissertation over in a different area. When I told her I couldn’t afford to start over, because my financial support ended this year, she suggested I let him fuck me.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said.
Ange shook her head. “She said when buildings are being bombed and politically outspoken faculty are disappearing in the middle of the night, ‘small incivilities’ don’t mean much.”
