“Wonderful.” Vanessa was compulsively punctual. When she kept these appointments, she wished she weren’t. “Let’s get it over with, okay?”
The smile slipped. He wanted her to like him for the favors he’d done her. And he had done them, too. She wouldn’t have come here if he hadn’t. But wanting her to like him. . Hey, people in hell wanted mint juleps to drink. That didn’t mean they’d get them.
“Well,” he said. He closed the door and clicked the locking button in the center of the knob. Then he sat down in the swivel chair behind the generic office desk. He undid his belt, unzipped his slacks, and slid them down around his ankles. He hiked up his blue cotton dress shirt.
Vanessa got down on her knees in front of him. She took him in her hand and then, muttering, took him in her mouth. She sucked hard. She wanted to get it over with as fast as she could. A few minutes every couple of weeks, in exchange for living better than she would have otherwise. . A simple enough bargain, she’d thought so when she made it. Payback was a bitch, though, as it often was.
He opened his pale, hairy knees a little wider, trying to stretch it out. But he wanted to come, too. Just before he did, Vanessa pulled her head away so the nasty stuff landed on his belly and in his pubic hair.
She wiped her chin off on her sleeve. Micah Husak pulled a couple of Kleenexes out of a box on the desk and tidied himself up. “I wish you’d let me finish in your mouth,” he said peevishly.
“Forget it,” she answered as she got to her feet. “I don’t do that for anybody.”
“Well,” Micah said once more. But a guy who’d just been blown wasn’t in the mood to do a lot of complaining. He wasn’t the first with whom Vanessa had seen that. As he set his clothes to rights, he went on, “I’ll see you in two weeks, then.”
“Yeah,” Vanessa said tightly. She was sure one of the reasons he didn’t insist more with her was that he had his other side girls. If he wanted to come in somebody’s mouth, no doubt he could.
Camp Constitution was a humongous place. And it was only one of too many, all depressingly alike. How much petty corruption like his went on in them? Lots and lots. She was all too sure of that. Enough so people on the outside didn’t get up in arms when some of it surfaced. Up in arms? Hell, most of the time they didn’t even notice. It wasn’t as if they didn’t have troubles of their own.
She couldn’t even slam the door behind her when she walked out of the little office. It had a compressed-air cylinder attachment at the top that thwarted tantrums. She left the administration building by way of the FEMA STAFF ONLY door. “Have a good one,” the guard said as he handed the pistol back to her.
“Here? Fat chance!” she answered. He only chuckled. Did he know what went on with the women who had appointments with Micah Husak? If he didn’t know, could he guess? Vanessa wouldn’t have been surprised.
A new thought occurred to her as she trudged grimly back toward her tent. Was Micah the only one there who collected favors for favors? Or did half, or more than half, the FEMA guys get what they wanted when they wanted it? That wouldn’t have surprised her one bit, either. There were bound to be too many chances, too many temptations, to resist.
A cat ambling down the lane glanced back over its shoulder at her and picked the amble up to a trot. It was mostly white, with a couple of black spots. It had a fat bottom and a small head. When it paused for a moment to wash a foot, it looked like a bowling pin with ears.
Loneliness stabbed through Vanessa. “Kitty, kitty, kitty!” she called. They’d made her turn her cat loose when she got to the refugee center in Garden City, Kansas. The high school there had no room for pets. She kept hoping someone else had realized how wonderful Pickles was and taken him in, but she knew he was bound to be dead. So were most of the people who’d lived in Garden City. An awful lot a volcanic ash had come down there: not as much as in Denver, but an awful lot all the same.
She called the fat-assed white cat again. Its ears twitched toward her, but it decided that foot was clean enough and trotted on.
“Stupid thing,” Vanessa muttered. More likely, though, it already had a human-or, like Micah Husak, more than one-on its string. Even if it didn’t, cats had a fine old time at Camp Constitution. Swarms of people in one none-too-sanitary place meant corresponding swarms of mice and rats.
You could have pets here. Some people had brought in big, mean dogs. Those mostly didn’t last long. They either had sad accidents or they started starving and had to be released outside the camp or put down. There were no kibble distributions here. You fed pets from your own rations. A cat? No problem. A Rottweiler? That was a different story.
A little dog might be okay. Cats could like you pretty well, but they were also in the deal for what they could get out of it. Dogs loved you whether you deserved it or not. That kind of slavish devotion had always grated on Vanessa. The longer she had anything to do with Micah Husak, though, the less attractive feline expediency looked.
“A puppy?” she said, and nodded to herself. “A puppy.” They wouldn’t be hard to find. And something that wouldn’t care for her just on account of what she did for it seemed especially wonderful right after she’d visited the administration building.
Louise Ferguson glanced at the clock on the wall across from her desk. She stood up. She’d forgotten how much effort that took when you were pregnant out to here. The bowling ball in your belly messed up your balance, too, just at the time when falling would be most disastrous.
She stuck her head into Mr. Nobashi’s inner office. Her boss was on the phone, yelling in Japanese mixed with occasional English swearwords. The ramen company’s corporate headquarters were in Hiroshima. The San Atanasio building was only a colonial outpost.
Mr. Nobashi raised a questioning eyebrow. “Please excuse me,” Louise said, “but I have a doctor’s appointment at eleven o’clock.” She patted her bulging belly to show what kind of appointment it was.
“Oh, Jesus Christ!” Her boss covered the phone’s mouthpiece with the palm of one hand. “Okay. You go. I see you after lunch, yes?” His English was telegraphic and heavily accented, but Louise rarely had trouble figuring out what he meant.
“Thank you. Yes,” Louise answered. The baby kicked or stretched or did whatever the hell he did. People talked about the miracle of life. What that amounted to for a woman was, stuff was going on inside you, but it wasn’t stuff you were doing. It was wonderful, sure. But this was the fourth time Louise had gone through it, and it still weirded her out.
She walked out to the parking lot. The ramen works’ American center had been on Braxton Bragg Boulevard since the 1970s. The neighborhood was a lot rougher now than it had been back in the day. A fence of stout steel palings topped by razor wire surrounded the lot. Despite the fence, an armed guard stayed on duty 24/7.
The Hispanic guy out there now nodded to Louise and touched an index finger to the brim of his dark blue Smokey the Bear hat in what was almost but not quite a salute. He remained watchful and alert. He’d probably done a tour or two in Iraq or Afghanistan. How much easier was this? He didn’t have to worry about IEDs in San Atanasio, anyhow.
He kept an eye on her till she’d left the lot. She didn’t know where the ramen company hired its guards, but they were all solid.
She flicked on her headlights. The morning fog had thinned, but it was still there. The lights wouldn’t do anything to help her see. They’d help other people see her, though, which also counted. The South Bay could get some real pea-soupers, but at this time of year? She shook her head. Not before the supervolcano erupted. Not a chance.
Her OB-GYN’s office was only about ten minutes away. The doc she’d gone to when Rob, Vanessa, and Marshall were born had long since retired. Dr. Travis Suzuki was one of the new breed: younger than she was, brusque, and efficient. He thought she was nutso for having the baby. He didn’t come right out and say so, but she also didn’t need a magnifying glass to read between the lines.
When she walked into the waiting room, two other pregnant women were sitting there. They were both in their twenties. The blonde chewed gum while she listened to her iPod. The Asian gal was leafing through a copy of
