Post by Evangeline on Nov 26, 2007 21:35:48 GMT -5
I received the call at about 10:13 PM, halfway through the rerun of Global Peace Force that seemed to occupy every other channel these days. After the first awkward "hello", the caller's words began to tumble out, consonants sticking like fishbones in her throat. She didn't have to say so much as six syllables before I had the full measure of her - early middle age, educated, not used to having to troll in the gutters for whatever she needed - what they used to call a "yuppie". How she got my number I had no idea - my name is nowhere in any phone directory, and I sublet. But Mrs. Rifkin had a need, and I had a service, and that's what mattered.
"Zoe - She'll be 18 soon, you know," Mrs. Rifkin proceeded unconsciously as if I had known her and her daughter all their lives. "The counselor at her school tells me that I shouldn't worry, that once the Youth Corps takes her, she'll probably get placed with some NGO and maybe work with kids in Africa or something. But I've been hearing things, that I don't know whether to believe or not. My cousin's daughter just came back, and she's ... just not the same. She never drank before, or did drugs, but since she's been home, she hasn't drawn a sober breath. When anyone asks her, she either breaks down in tears or freaks right out. She says she can't say anything, or they will "get her". And a friend at work also has a kid in the service and she can't get in touch with him at all. He's not where the UN said he would be assigned. I'm afraid. I'm afraid for my daughter." The next words were as predictable as the evil-evil-guns lecture embedded within the TV show. "Can you come and see us?"
I sighed, and took another sip of bootleg Coca-Cola. "Is there somewhere we could meet, Mrs. Rifkin?"
Her voice was muted, but steadier now. "Sally, if you please.There is a pita place on Equity Avenue, west end. Shadi's?"
"I know the place. What time would be good for you?" I reached over a stack of old comic books for a pen that hadn't walked away on me yet.
"How's tomorrow afternoon? Three o' clock?"
"Sure, Sally. See you there."
Shadi's is a hole in the wall by Equity and King, one of the many pita palaces that grew like moss on rocks after the Bahnzaf Brigade had run the fast-food places out of business. The proprietor, a gentleman of Turkish descent, made a studied show of professional detatchment as I sauntered up to the counter and ordered a pita with hummus, black olives and tatziki sauce with a bottle of cranberry-grape juice. He actually knows me better than that, but doesn't get too chummy when I'm obviously at work. I was all "business casual" - peach blouse, linen skirt, slingback pumps, no pantyhose in the 39C heat of late July. My own chestnut hair was covered by a wig of raven tresses and my eyes by classic mirror-shade aviators, with grey-green color contacts underneath for good measure. Depending on makeup, I can pass for any age from thirtysomething to fiftyish. For this occasion, I settled for a well-preserved forty.
While "Shadi" processed the order, I turned about, took out the earbuds of my MP3 player, put my CellMate on "vibrate" and scanned the row of booths along the other wall of the establishment. At the door end, there were a couple of gothy-looking kids with more piercings than I figured were good for them. At the other end, a bum with long, stringy gray hair and a greasy racing jacket. It was 2:53. I selected a reasonably clean middle booth and slid in, back facing the door, but with a glance towards the stained and cracked fish-eye mirror at the back wall.
At 3:01, the Rifkins arrived. I didn't really have to ask. Mom was about 5'8", dark ash blonde, definitely had the three-kid caboose but was otherwise height/weight proportional. She was all neutral colors - shirt, pants, makeup - as if she figured that if she took on earth tones, she'd disappear. Nice handbag, though - buttery, expensive leather. From those initial observations, it was apparent that Sally Rifkin definitely held certain expectations about what constituted a "good" life, and, until recently, had assumed that the path of her daughter would be more of the pleasant same.
Sally's daughter was, physically, a younger edition of her mom, but taller, slimmer, and blonder. Zoe was slightly tanned, but also translucent in that way that only a teenager can be, and her wheaten hair fell to the small of her back, checked only by her ears. Her face was chiselled and delicately featured with hazel eyes and the odd soft freckle, and her figure communicated the results of many hours at a balance beam. She stood before me in flat gelly sandals, french-cut crop-topped shirt and shorts, all candy and pastels. She was very pretty.
And therein lay her problem.
I took my napkin, rolled it up into a ball, and set it to my right - that was the signal we'd agreed on. They also bought sandwiches, took the booth adjacent to mine, and made no outward show of acknowledgement. However, my CellMate PDA shook like a nudist in the Arctic, in the pattern that signified a text message.
u r carolyn? My "contact name".
I responded with one letter. y.
good, my LCD flashed. can u tk w Zoe?
sure.
carolyn? mom says i shd tk w u abt th corps. i know th corps is CWOT but i cant gt out of dng it.
CWOT. Complete Waste of Time. At least Zoe seems to have a properly squared sense of reality.
I work out my next course of action. when we r done cm w me 2 King Park. With a cursory goodbye, I slid the CellMate back into my Not-Quite-A-Coach Bag and headed back outside, as if getting on with my afternoon. When the Rifkins finished eating, I was waiting on a bench before the Fountain of Diversity at King Park. As in Martin Luther King, of course. Just another happy One-Worlder, paying my homage to the secular saints with my earbuds in place and my MP3 player feeding me sonic distractions. Only, most correct-thinking people didn't listen to audio files of Claire Wolfe books and Leslie Fish playing "Black Powder and Alcohol". If I dared play those out loud, I'd surely wind up "in therapy". Everbody knows what that means. My designer knockoff bag held even more subversive suprises, if anyone troubled me that much.
After another ten minutes, Sally and Zoe reappear, and sit on the bench beside me. It's a good spot for a confidential talk; the sound of the fountain and other ambient noise should mask our conversation nicely, and my bug detector has given the area a clean bill of health.
"...What got to me, really got to me, was seeing how Laura had ... changed. She was so bubbly before. Now she hardly leaves her room. And her eyes are like... holes, you know? The life is gone. I just want to know, what could do that?" Sally didn't seem to be talking me so much as she was talking into the air, as if hoping to broadcast her frequency to some distant reciever. "And I'm hearing little bits and pieces all around, and it scares the hell out of me. People just don't talk as openly as they used to, you know..."
I know, I know. I pretended to feed pigeons while the bits of information in Sally's stream of consciousness washed onto its banks like debris that must be picked through. I slid my eyes over to Zoe, who sat wordless and pinch-lipped, trying to lose herself in the light glinting off the fountain pool. I thought of other girls like her, and boys too, swept into the UN's mandatory service upon completing high school. If one was rich or well-connected, they could get a plum position with some prominent NGO. If they weren't so rich, they'd wind up digging wells in some godforsaken third-world pesthole, or "peacekeeping", which was arguably worse for all its corrupting and degrading influences. If they were attractive at all...
...They could find themselves assigned as "party favours" for the big honchos and all their friends in all the infamous dens of "The Dictator's Club". You can guess the rest. If your imagination is sufficiently perverted.
And poor Zoe, with no big money or pull in her background to defend her interests, just looked too damned good. A nice, ripe peach that begged to be consumed to the pit and discarded.
I figured I might as well get to the point right off. "Zoe, you're a beautiful girl, but beauty is a two-edged sword. If you are going to survive the next two years, you're going to have to make your "goodies" less obvious." I looked at her, juggling all the variables of the package she now presented versus what was going to keep her out of a UN brothel. "First, your hair. Cut it and dye it darker. Not black like mine, but kind of mousy. Dye your eyebrows too. Your hair could be chin-length or high and tight like an old-time Marine's, just not so long as it is now." I could observe a tremor of dismay going through the girl, and to a lesser extent, her mother, but they ultimately didn't resist the notion. So far so good.
"Don't wear makeup or jewelry. Wean yourself off it. Dress a bit "frumpy" - ratty jeans and T-shirt, maybe flannel shirt over that. Sneakers too. Nails should be short, with no polish. And - this will be the hardest part.." I pointed at her partially exposed midriff, now tight and flat as a board, "eat up a little and gain some weight, maybe fifteen to twenty pounds. A little fat on the face and hips makes you look "ordinary". If you look plain, even a bit "dykey", they won't give you a second glance. With luck, you might get placed in a nice, quiet warehouse or back office job where all you have to do is type stuff or shuffle things around all day. Boring, but you'll keep your soul. But realize that as you had to work to get where you are now, you'll have to work to be "ordinary". But I'll be with you for the rest of the summer, helping you. By the time you get to the induction office in October, even YOU won't know you. But this needs committment. You got that, Zoe?"
Zoe pursed her lips, but she nodded. "Yes." She was starting to recognize that the propaganda she'd been fed ever since first grade was just that.
"Good". I allowed myself a bit of a smile. "Get to work on the hair and the clothes and we'll touch bases next week. We'll make a wallflower of you yet!"
If Zoe and her mom were serious about what now lay ahead of them, they stood a fair chance of passing the next two years with a boring but safe posting for the former and some peace of mind for the latter. Now, they would have to hit the second-hand and consignment stores to get the right look for Zoe’s new self. I would also have to get into Zoe’s records on the global student database and do some subtle jiggery-pokery to match any recent pictures with her new “slacker” ensemble. That is where I take real risks, but I started out at the tender age of thirteen as just another script kiddie and kept learning.
Speaking of jiggery-pokery… after seeing off my newest clients, I kept on walking down Equity, window-shopping at every other storefront in a way guaranteed to put anyone watching the public CCTV network into a state of semi-comatose boredom. This got me down to one of the blind spots, an uncovered alcove in an alley between a shop selling “authentic Irish jewellery” and a store selling old vinyl records and reconditioned turntables. Audiophiles had gone ga-ga for the old stuff lately. The entrance of the store was exactly on the corner of one of the alley walls and a difference with the clearance of the neighboring establishment shielded it from the camera looking at the west end of the street. From the east end camera, it looked like I was heading into the music store entrance. This wasn’t a downscale place; the music offered was mostly classical, jazz, opera and some obscure and esoteric offshoots. I looked just right for the joint. But instead, I continued right down the alley, just as a tractor-trailer passed on the street, blocking eyeballs across the street. I ducked behind the dumpster, and into a recessed area behind.
Off went the top, skirt and wig. Out from my Not-A-Coach bag came a folding gym bag; all were stuffed inside, the wig carefully packed in a net first. I might want to use it again sometime, after all. I had on a sports bra, tank top and bicycle shorts underneath the “business casual”, and with the sandals replaced by ankle socks and Nikes, I was almost ready. I wiped off the last of the makeup, fluffed out my real hair which had already been pre-streaked with pyschedelic colours and completed the look of a rather loud-looking woman, perhaps the proprietor or manager of a “hip” store, on her way to the Aphrodite Gym several blocks over on Kofi Annan Boulevard. My RFID would be a little more troublesome, but not impossible to manage. I had several nested in my bracelet collection, all in a gel-lined pouch in my gym bag. I drew out a yellow plastic model that went with the rest of the persona. I c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y eased out in synch with the bus that passed along this route every hour, which would not be too crowded as rush hour had still not begun. From there, I moved at a faster, power-walking pace, head high, eyes locked ahead.
The Aphrodite Gym was, as its name made abundantly clear, was one of those women-only facilities decked out in hot pink, silver and NordicTracks. I spent rush hour moving from treadmill to weights to kick-boxing bag and finished off on the elliptical trainer. In the furthest shower stall, I washed out the hair streaks, rubbed Illegally Blonde into my hair and changed RFID’s one more time. Don’t even ask where I had those hidden! I know the owner of the place, she’ll do my “check-out” herself. I helped her straighten out some matters with a crooked Globo-cop a year or so back. Now he’s ticketing donkey carts in Wherethe****istan, and exactly how he got there is for me to know and you to find out… eventually.
I got into my locker, where another set of clothes lay waiting. With a T-shirt and shorts from the gym, I looked like a gym staffer getting off her shift and there were at least two of them with short blonde hair. Another alley-trekking session, and I came into the rear service entrance of Pulp, Panels and Pixels, which dealt in comics, games, digital media and certain periodicals. There was a back-room café there, used for LAN parties, gaming sessions and general hanging out for the usual coterie of high school kids and geeks. Old B-movies played on several wall-mounted screens, and they were definitely having a Chop-Socky day.
Duane Carrefour was waiting for me, leaning back in his chair, arms hanging. He pushed his long black hair out of his face as I took a seat opposite him. With his three-day whiskers and his old Dream Theater T-shirt, he put me in mind of a hobo goth. The ‘hobo’ part I might agree with. He had probably been hopping freight trains again. I had done it once or twice. Hanging off the back deck of a hopper car in –20C temps is no fun at all.
“How they hangin’ Duane?”
“I’m lucky they’re still there, Bea. Had to climb over barb wire to get away from the railroad cops. They’re mostly Mexicans now, not like the old-time bulls. They catch you, they just kill you. South of Tennesee, the towpaths are graveyards. Not even FTRA goes down there anymore.”
“So I heard.”
“Canada is better though. Here and there is some old CNR guy, and some of them will look the other way. So watcha got in the bag?”
“Eh? None of your beeswax, but I do have something…” I unzipped an outside pocket and withdrew a small bundle of booklets – photocopied, bright yellow paper. I tossed one over to Duane. He peered at the cover and snickered. “Another minicomic?”
“Does it look like chopped liver to you?” I took a swill of MaxiAde and grinned at him.
“No, it looks like… a talking cartoon pistol. Jeez, Bea, you’re skating real close to the line there!”
I shrugged. “Suppose I should be doing nekkid boobies and pee-pees? Buppies and fuzzies? Something else NAMBLA hasn’t thought of yet? Hell no, I do the DARING stuff! I can’t very well phrase it as “The NRA was right after all,” but kids will home in on anything the parents and “authorities” rail against. It’s going by the Jack Chick method of distribution, in all the usual places by all the usual suspects. You know which.” I leaned forward, face propped up on hands, “So what is it that you risked getting served up to coyotes for?”
Duane pulled up his lanky frame and his long chimp arms. His mouth formed a smile, building on the sardonic lip-curl that had never quite left him since our high school days. “Seeing some family in Knoxville. Didn’t want it on the passenger logs. I’m supposed to be planting trees in Pennsylvania. Only work a former libertarian columnist can get. Like hell I’m taking any “global citizen” oath just to prattle about objectivism lite. You, babe, are lucky that you have the consulting gigs and do freelance work and can stay out of the corporate crap.”
“I won’t have to do much more consulting if that Tugboat Annie thing takes off – remember that? I’m working through a small publisher – you know Snowmoon Books? - they’ve got a pretty solid reputation in kiddie lit. I’ll see how much secret subversion I can get by the editors. Raise up a whole generation of little kids on Robert Heinlein libertarian-conservatism in a nice new wrapper. Of course, it helps that the publisher is a stubborn old coot who was in the Marines before they were done away with. He had quite a few real estate investments before the Conversion, so he could set up his company without having to beg capital from the banks and have their noses in his business.”
There was a genuinely hopeful look on Duane’s face. “That would be sweet. I always hoped the best for you, Bea, even if “we” didn’t last after high school.” He sighed. “I could have made a big show of drinking the Kool-Aid and falling into line with the rest of the media writers, but I just can’t live with lies. You know, it always killed me when I had to mouth the words that would keep the Social Studies teacher from zeroing my **s in school. I did it because getting thrown out of school would have killed my mother. As it was, she died anyway.”
Duane’s mother, you see, had pulled through the bird flu early in life, but it had damaged her heart and lungs and shortened her years in this mortal coil. Nothing much anyone could do. But at least he had had a relationship with her before she went. I had my grandmother and an aunt, both already overburdened with little time for a newly orphaned seven-year-old. I had to bring myself up. Would I have been the same if I’d had someone looking over my shoulder all the time?
Off in the corner was a snack machine. I went over, stuck my hand in the reader bay and got some plantain chips. Not quite the same as potato chips of old, but they would fill a hole until we got some real food. I gave a handful to Duane.
“I’m sure she’s looking down on you from heaven. If she could keep those school weenies from stuffing you full of Zoloft, she can surely wangle a favor from an angel once in a while.”
“You still believe?” Duane fixed his grey eyes on me. His family, except for his mother, hadn’t been church people. I went because my aunt went, and, to be honest, I’d had a serious crush on one of the youth pastors.
I glanced about. We pretty much had the café to ourselves. There were a couple of kids doing their best to top each other on the vintage Dance Dance Revolution game over to our right, but the vintage collectable card game crowd wouldn’t be in ‘till later.
“Yes.”
"Zoe - She'll be 18 soon, you know," Mrs. Rifkin proceeded unconsciously as if I had known her and her daughter all their lives. "The counselor at her school tells me that I shouldn't worry, that once the Youth Corps takes her, she'll probably get placed with some NGO and maybe work with kids in Africa or something. But I've been hearing things, that I don't know whether to believe or not. My cousin's daughter just came back, and she's ... just not the same. She never drank before, or did drugs, but since she's been home, she hasn't drawn a sober breath. When anyone asks her, she either breaks down in tears or freaks right out. She says she can't say anything, or they will "get her". And a friend at work also has a kid in the service and she can't get in touch with him at all. He's not where the UN said he would be assigned. I'm afraid. I'm afraid for my daughter." The next words were as predictable as the evil-evil-guns lecture embedded within the TV show. "Can you come and see us?"
I sighed, and took another sip of bootleg Coca-Cola. "Is there somewhere we could meet, Mrs. Rifkin?"
Her voice was muted, but steadier now. "Sally, if you please.There is a pita place on Equity Avenue, west end. Shadi's?"
"I know the place. What time would be good for you?" I reached over a stack of old comic books for a pen that hadn't walked away on me yet.
"How's tomorrow afternoon? Three o' clock?"
"Sure, Sally. See you there."
Shadi's is a hole in the wall by Equity and King, one of the many pita palaces that grew like moss on rocks after the Bahnzaf Brigade had run the fast-food places out of business. The proprietor, a gentleman of Turkish descent, made a studied show of professional detatchment as I sauntered up to the counter and ordered a pita with hummus, black olives and tatziki sauce with a bottle of cranberry-grape juice. He actually knows me better than that, but doesn't get too chummy when I'm obviously at work. I was all "business casual" - peach blouse, linen skirt, slingback pumps, no pantyhose in the 39C heat of late July. My own chestnut hair was covered by a wig of raven tresses and my eyes by classic mirror-shade aviators, with grey-green color contacts underneath for good measure. Depending on makeup, I can pass for any age from thirtysomething to fiftyish. For this occasion, I settled for a well-preserved forty.
While "Shadi" processed the order, I turned about, took out the earbuds of my MP3 player, put my CellMate on "vibrate" and scanned the row of booths along the other wall of the establishment. At the door end, there were a couple of gothy-looking kids with more piercings than I figured were good for them. At the other end, a bum with long, stringy gray hair and a greasy racing jacket. It was 2:53. I selected a reasonably clean middle booth and slid in, back facing the door, but with a glance towards the stained and cracked fish-eye mirror at the back wall.
At 3:01, the Rifkins arrived. I didn't really have to ask. Mom was about 5'8", dark ash blonde, definitely had the three-kid caboose but was otherwise height/weight proportional. She was all neutral colors - shirt, pants, makeup - as if she figured that if she took on earth tones, she'd disappear. Nice handbag, though - buttery, expensive leather. From those initial observations, it was apparent that Sally Rifkin definitely held certain expectations about what constituted a "good" life, and, until recently, had assumed that the path of her daughter would be more of the pleasant same.
Sally's daughter was, physically, a younger edition of her mom, but taller, slimmer, and blonder. Zoe was slightly tanned, but also translucent in that way that only a teenager can be, and her wheaten hair fell to the small of her back, checked only by her ears. Her face was chiselled and delicately featured with hazel eyes and the odd soft freckle, and her figure communicated the results of many hours at a balance beam. She stood before me in flat gelly sandals, french-cut crop-topped shirt and shorts, all candy and pastels. She was very pretty.
And therein lay her problem.
I took my napkin, rolled it up into a ball, and set it to my right - that was the signal we'd agreed on. They also bought sandwiches, took the booth adjacent to mine, and made no outward show of acknowledgement. However, my CellMate PDA shook like a nudist in the Arctic, in the pattern that signified a text message.
u r carolyn? My "contact name".
I responded with one letter. y.
good, my LCD flashed. can u tk w Zoe?
sure.
carolyn? mom says i shd tk w u abt th corps. i know th corps is CWOT but i cant gt out of dng it.
CWOT. Complete Waste of Time. At least Zoe seems to have a properly squared sense of reality.
I work out my next course of action. when we r done cm w me 2 King Park. With a cursory goodbye, I slid the CellMate back into my Not-Quite-A-Coach Bag and headed back outside, as if getting on with my afternoon. When the Rifkins finished eating, I was waiting on a bench before the Fountain of Diversity at King Park. As in Martin Luther King, of course. Just another happy One-Worlder, paying my homage to the secular saints with my earbuds in place and my MP3 player feeding me sonic distractions. Only, most correct-thinking people didn't listen to audio files of Claire Wolfe books and Leslie Fish playing "Black Powder and Alcohol". If I dared play those out loud, I'd surely wind up "in therapy". Everbody knows what that means. My designer knockoff bag held even more subversive suprises, if anyone troubled me that much.
After another ten minutes, Sally and Zoe reappear, and sit on the bench beside me. It's a good spot for a confidential talk; the sound of the fountain and other ambient noise should mask our conversation nicely, and my bug detector has given the area a clean bill of health.
"...What got to me, really got to me, was seeing how Laura had ... changed. She was so bubbly before. Now she hardly leaves her room. And her eyes are like... holes, you know? The life is gone. I just want to know, what could do that?" Sally didn't seem to be talking me so much as she was talking into the air, as if hoping to broadcast her frequency to some distant reciever. "And I'm hearing little bits and pieces all around, and it scares the hell out of me. People just don't talk as openly as they used to, you know..."
I know, I know. I pretended to feed pigeons while the bits of information in Sally's stream of consciousness washed onto its banks like debris that must be picked through. I slid my eyes over to Zoe, who sat wordless and pinch-lipped, trying to lose herself in the light glinting off the fountain pool. I thought of other girls like her, and boys too, swept into the UN's mandatory service upon completing high school. If one was rich or well-connected, they could get a plum position with some prominent NGO. If they weren't so rich, they'd wind up digging wells in some godforsaken third-world pesthole, or "peacekeeping", which was arguably worse for all its corrupting and degrading influences. If they were attractive at all...
...They could find themselves assigned as "party favours" for the big honchos and all their friends in all the infamous dens of "The Dictator's Club". You can guess the rest. If your imagination is sufficiently perverted.
And poor Zoe, with no big money or pull in her background to defend her interests, just looked too damned good. A nice, ripe peach that begged to be consumed to the pit and discarded.
I figured I might as well get to the point right off. "Zoe, you're a beautiful girl, but beauty is a two-edged sword. If you are going to survive the next two years, you're going to have to make your "goodies" less obvious." I looked at her, juggling all the variables of the package she now presented versus what was going to keep her out of a UN brothel. "First, your hair. Cut it and dye it darker. Not black like mine, but kind of mousy. Dye your eyebrows too. Your hair could be chin-length or high and tight like an old-time Marine's, just not so long as it is now." I could observe a tremor of dismay going through the girl, and to a lesser extent, her mother, but they ultimately didn't resist the notion. So far so good.
"Don't wear makeup or jewelry. Wean yourself off it. Dress a bit "frumpy" - ratty jeans and T-shirt, maybe flannel shirt over that. Sneakers too. Nails should be short, with no polish. And - this will be the hardest part.." I pointed at her partially exposed midriff, now tight and flat as a board, "eat up a little and gain some weight, maybe fifteen to twenty pounds. A little fat on the face and hips makes you look "ordinary". If you look plain, even a bit "dykey", they won't give you a second glance. With luck, you might get placed in a nice, quiet warehouse or back office job where all you have to do is type stuff or shuffle things around all day. Boring, but you'll keep your soul. But realize that as you had to work to get where you are now, you'll have to work to be "ordinary". But I'll be with you for the rest of the summer, helping you. By the time you get to the induction office in October, even YOU won't know you. But this needs committment. You got that, Zoe?"
Zoe pursed her lips, but she nodded. "Yes." She was starting to recognize that the propaganda she'd been fed ever since first grade was just that.
"Good". I allowed myself a bit of a smile. "Get to work on the hair and the clothes and we'll touch bases next week. We'll make a wallflower of you yet!"
If Zoe and her mom were serious about what now lay ahead of them, they stood a fair chance of passing the next two years with a boring but safe posting for the former and some peace of mind for the latter. Now, they would have to hit the second-hand and consignment stores to get the right look for Zoe’s new self. I would also have to get into Zoe’s records on the global student database and do some subtle jiggery-pokery to match any recent pictures with her new “slacker” ensemble. That is where I take real risks, but I started out at the tender age of thirteen as just another script kiddie and kept learning.
Speaking of jiggery-pokery… after seeing off my newest clients, I kept on walking down Equity, window-shopping at every other storefront in a way guaranteed to put anyone watching the public CCTV network into a state of semi-comatose boredom. This got me down to one of the blind spots, an uncovered alcove in an alley between a shop selling “authentic Irish jewellery” and a store selling old vinyl records and reconditioned turntables. Audiophiles had gone ga-ga for the old stuff lately. The entrance of the store was exactly on the corner of one of the alley walls and a difference with the clearance of the neighboring establishment shielded it from the camera looking at the west end of the street. From the east end camera, it looked like I was heading into the music store entrance. This wasn’t a downscale place; the music offered was mostly classical, jazz, opera and some obscure and esoteric offshoots. I looked just right for the joint. But instead, I continued right down the alley, just as a tractor-trailer passed on the street, blocking eyeballs across the street. I ducked behind the dumpster, and into a recessed area behind.
Off went the top, skirt and wig. Out from my Not-A-Coach bag came a folding gym bag; all were stuffed inside, the wig carefully packed in a net first. I might want to use it again sometime, after all. I had on a sports bra, tank top and bicycle shorts underneath the “business casual”, and with the sandals replaced by ankle socks and Nikes, I was almost ready. I wiped off the last of the makeup, fluffed out my real hair which had already been pre-streaked with pyschedelic colours and completed the look of a rather loud-looking woman, perhaps the proprietor or manager of a “hip” store, on her way to the Aphrodite Gym several blocks over on Kofi Annan Boulevard. My RFID would be a little more troublesome, but not impossible to manage. I had several nested in my bracelet collection, all in a gel-lined pouch in my gym bag. I drew out a yellow plastic model that went with the rest of the persona. I c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y eased out in synch with the bus that passed along this route every hour, which would not be too crowded as rush hour had still not begun. From there, I moved at a faster, power-walking pace, head high, eyes locked ahead.
The Aphrodite Gym was, as its name made abundantly clear, was one of those women-only facilities decked out in hot pink, silver and NordicTracks. I spent rush hour moving from treadmill to weights to kick-boxing bag and finished off on the elliptical trainer. In the furthest shower stall, I washed out the hair streaks, rubbed Illegally Blonde into my hair and changed RFID’s one more time. Don’t even ask where I had those hidden! I know the owner of the place, she’ll do my “check-out” herself. I helped her straighten out some matters with a crooked Globo-cop a year or so back. Now he’s ticketing donkey carts in Wherethe****istan, and exactly how he got there is for me to know and you to find out… eventually.
I got into my locker, where another set of clothes lay waiting. With a T-shirt and shorts from the gym, I looked like a gym staffer getting off her shift and there were at least two of them with short blonde hair. Another alley-trekking session, and I came into the rear service entrance of Pulp, Panels and Pixels, which dealt in comics, games, digital media and certain periodicals. There was a back-room café there, used for LAN parties, gaming sessions and general hanging out for the usual coterie of high school kids and geeks. Old B-movies played on several wall-mounted screens, and they were definitely having a Chop-Socky day.
Duane Carrefour was waiting for me, leaning back in his chair, arms hanging. He pushed his long black hair out of his face as I took a seat opposite him. With his three-day whiskers and his old Dream Theater T-shirt, he put me in mind of a hobo goth. The ‘hobo’ part I might agree with. He had probably been hopping freight trains again. I had done it once or twice. Hanging off the back deck of a hopper car in –20C temps is no fun at all.
“How they hangin’ Duane?”
“I’m lucky they’re still there, Bea. Had to climb over barb wire to get away from the railroad cops. They’re mostly Mexicans now, not like the old-time bulls. They catch you, they just kill you. South of Tennesee, the towpaths are graveyards. Not even FTRA goes down there anymore.”
“So I heard.”
“Canada is better though. Here and there is some old CNR guy, and some of them will look the other way. So watcha got in the bag?”
“Eh? None of your beeswax, but I do have something…” I unzipped an outside pocket and withdrew a small bundle of booklets – photocopied, bright yellow paper. I tossed one over to Duane. He peered at the cover and snickered. “Another minicomic?”
“Does it look like chopped liver to you?” I took a swill of MaxiAde and grinned at him.
“No, it looks like… a talking cartoon pistol. Jeez, Bea, you’re skating real close to the line there!”
I shrugged. “Suppose I should be doing nekkid boobies and pee-pees? Buppies and fuzzies? Something else NAMBLA hasn’t thought of yet? Hell no, I do the DARING stuff! I can’t very well phrase it as “The NRA was right after all,” but kids will home in on anything the parents and “authorities” rail against. It’s going by the Jack Chick method of distribution, in all the usual places by all the usual suspects. You know which.” I leaned forward, face propped up on hands, “So what is it that you risked getting served up to coyotes for?”
Duane pulled up his lanky frame and his long chimp arms. His mouth formed a smile, building on the sardonic lip-curl that had never quite left him since our high school days. “Seeing some family in Knoxville. Didn’t want it on the passenger logs. I’m supposed to be planting trees in Pennsylvania. Only work a former libertarian columnist can get. Like hell I’m taking any “global citizen” oath just to prattle about objectivism lite. You, babe, are lucky that you have the consulting gigs and do freelance work and can stay out of the corporate crap.”
“I won’t have to do much more consulting if that Tugboat Annie thing takes off – remember that? I’m working through a small publisher – you know Snowmoon Books? - they’ve got a pretty solid reputation in kiddie lit. I’ll see how much secret subversion I can get by the editors. Raise up a whole generation of little kids on Robert Heinlein libertarian-conservatism in a nice new wrapper. Of course, it helps that the publisher is a stubborn old coot who was in the Marines before they were done away with. He had quite a few real estate investments before the Conversion, so he could set up his company without having to beg capital from the banks and have their noses in his business.”
There was a genuinely hopeful look on Duane’s face. “That would be sweet. I always hoped the best for you, Bea, even if “we” didn’t last after high school.” He sighed. “I could have made a big show of drinking the Kool-Aid and falling into line with the rest of the media writers, but I just can’t live with lies. You know, it always killed me when I had to mouth the words that would keep the Social Studies teacher from zeroing my **s in school. I did it because getting thrown out of school would have killed my mother. As it was, she died anyway.”
Duane’s mother, you see, had pulled through the bird flu early in life, but it had damaged her heart and lungs and shortened her years in this mortal coil. Nothing much anyone could do. But at least he had had a relationship with her before she went. I had my grandmother and an aunt, both already overburdened with little time for a newly orphaned seven-year-old. I had to bring myself up. Would I have been the same if I’d had someone looking over my shoulder all the time?
Off in the corner was a snack machine. I went over, stuck my hand in the reader bay and got some plantain chips. Not quite the same as potato chips of old, but they would fill a hole until we got some real food. I gave a handful to Duane.
“I’m sure she’s looking down on you from heaven. If she could keep those school weenies from stuffing you full of Zoloft, she can surely wangle a favor from an angel once in a while.”
“You still believe?” Duane fixed his grey eyes on me. His family, except for his mother, hadn’t been church people. I went because my aunt went, and, to be honest, I’d had a serious crush on one of the youth pastors.
I glanced about. We pretty much had the café to ourselves. There were a couple of kids doing their best to top each other on the vintage Dance Dance Revolution game over to our right, but the vintage collectable card game crowd wouldn’t be in ‘till later.
“Yes.”
