us down.”
“You think so?” Joe sounded hopeful.
“I know so.”
Joe started the car, put it into gear, and we sped out of the parking lot, bouncing onto the street.
Philipe nodded to himself. “We can get these guys,” he said, and there was genuine excitement in his voice. “We can nail their asses to the wall.”
“Terrorists for the Common Man!” Steve pumped his fist in the air.
I, too, felt the excitement. “Yeah!” I said.
Joe let out an enthusiastic whoop, caught up in the moment.
Philipe grinned. “We’re gonna get those fuckers.”
The other terrorists were all waiting when we got home. Philipe gathered everyone into the living room and described what had happened at the meeting.
“So what do we do?” Don asked.
“We kill them,” Philipe said.
There was silence, I was remembering Familyland. I knew the others were, too.
“We take them out of the picture. We let the people of this city actually vote for the best candidate. We restore democracy to Desert Palms.”
James looked at Tim. Both looked at me. I wanted to be able to stand up and articulate their obvious misgivings, but I did not share those misgivings. I had been in that office with Philipe. I knew where he was coming from. I agreed with him.
“We’ll find a motel in Palm Springs or one of the other nearby cities, lay low for a week, let them think we left. Then we’ll strike.” He withdrew a gun from his inside jacket pocket. It was silver and gleamed in the room’s refracted light.
“Yeah!” Joe said excitedly. “Blow those fuckers away!”
Steve grinned.
“We all need to be armed.”
“What’s with all this killing?” Tim asked. “I don’t see why we need to kill anybody. Violence won’t solve — ”
“It’s a tool,” Philipe said. “The primary tool used by terrorists.”
“It’s the only thing they’ll understand,” Joe said. “It’s the only way to stop them.”
“I say we put it to a vote,” James said.
Philipe shook his head. “We’re going to get those fuckers. You can choose to help or not. But we’re going to do it.”
“Not,” Tim said.
Philipe shrugged. “That’s your right.”
Tim looked at me, but I could not meet his eyes. I keep my gaze focused on Philipe.
“Pack everything up,” Philipe ordered. “Like Joe said, they know where he lives. They’ll be after us soon. We have to get out of here.”
That night, sleeping alone in my spacious hotel room bed, I found myself mentally replaying everything that had happened in Harrington’s office. I remembered what Philipe had told Steve that morning in the car, about how people voted not on issues but name recognition.
Was all politics this way? I had the feeling that it was. I tried to think of the name of my congressman but could not. I could name only one of California’s two senators, I realized, although both of them sent me biannual “Senate Updates” and both did their damnedest to get their names in the newspaper at any opportunity.
I felt chilled. Was this democracy? This sham, this substanceless pretext of power supposedly in the hands of the people?
I fell asleep, and I dreamed that we flew to Washington, D.C., and went to the White House and walked right in. No security guards saw us; we were ignored by the Secret Service men.
I was in the lead, and I pushed open the door to the Oval Office. The President was meeting with his advisers, only it wasn’t really a meeting. They were telling him what to say, what to do, what to think. The President was surrounded by a platoon of men who were lecturing him from all sides, and he looked toward us and his eyes were wide and frightened, and I knew that he was one of us.
I awoke with my pillow drenched with sweat.
Fourteen
We spent Christmas in Palm Springs, at the Holiday Inn.
The place didn’t matter so much to us, but the rituals did — we were all uniformly in agreement on that — and on December 24, we hit the Palm Springs Mall and picked up presents for each other. Philipe set a limit: each of us could get only one gift per terrorist. There was to be no favoritism.
That night, Mary prepared roast beef and mashed potatoes with gravy, and we drank mulled wine and watched videotapes of
We went to sleep with visions of sugar plums dancing in our heads.
The next morning, we opened our presents. I received books and cassettes and videotapes and clothes and, from Philipe, an automatic rifle.
Mary prepared a turkey dinner, which we ate sometime in the mid-afternoon.
I could not help thinking of my previous Christmas, spent alone in my apartment. I felt better here with the others, but I still found myself thinking of even earlier Christmases, those spent with Jane and my parents. Then I had been really, truly happy. I had not realized it then, but I knew it now, and that knowledge depressed me. Not for the first time, I wished that I could turn back the clock and return to those days, that I could know then what I knew now, and that I could do everything over again.
But that was impossible, and I knew that it would only depress me further to look back at the past, and I forced myself to concentrate only on the present and the future.
Mary saw me sitting alone in the corner of the suite that we’d commandeered for Christmas Day, and she came over and planted a chaste kiss on my forehead. “Merry Christmas,” she said.
I smiled at her. “Merry Christmas.” I gave her a hug, kissed her on the cheek, and took the hand she offered me, walking back into the thick of the festivities, where Tommy was trying to teach Junior how to play Nintendo.
Fifteen
Business in the desert cities did not stop for the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, and we took the opportunity to do a little spying on the enemy. Joe told us who the power brokers were and where they worked, and we spent the week walking into some of the newer and more exclusive office buildings, checking out the lairs of our adversaries.
None of the security guards stationed at the entrances to the banks or corporate offices saw us, and we walked easily past them, into the buildings, choosing doors at random, going in. Some were locked, of course, but others weren’t, and behind them we saw deals being made, bribes being offered and accepted. We saw secretaries having sex with bosses, saw an executive with a photo of his wife and daughter on his desk fellating a younger man.
Sometimes these people would jump up in shock and outrage and horror when we barged in.
