Flee

by Evan Dara

  And like the label, the label leaning up in front of them …?

  Dike fingers.

  Hoo—

  —But I – and in four weeks I’m up for peer review, and Ted likes how I’m performing, he said so, I should get Grade 7, that’s another thirty-four dollars a week and change, and the kitchen cabinets are really coming along, and things are going great with Alicyn, and—

  —Hey, I went there, I walked all the way into town cause I didn’t want to deal with the parking. And there must have been ten, fifteen people hanging around the pavement out front, just waiting there, looking at each other then not looking at each other because no one knew what was going on, what they should do. But the hall was dark. Big wooden doors closed, locked tight, not a light visible through the transoms up top there and not even a sign in the glass case they use for the posters and all, there wasn’t even a notice taped up to the door. Damn. Great Town Meeting didn’t turn out so great after all—

  —Cool, fool, yeah, you know, my family, we’re bookin’ in three days! My dad told us like last week – were doing it, man, doin’ it, goin hoofin’ like, immediately – and that is so, like, just so—

  —A continuity counselor. That’s what the card said. A continuity—

  —The website, man, what the fuck they think they’re … This is supposed to patch us in, to keep us … And all that the Town Council, or City Hall, or whoever the fuck who’s – man, they just keep pumping out the bromides We’re taking steps and We’re making strides and Something we can all live with, The new normal and of course no one answers the telephone in City Hall because it’s just so normal in there—

  —A continuity—

  —O man, I hear this shit and, you know, I don’t want to know about it, OK? I do not want to, whatever it is – OK? – I do not want to—

  —Because, I mean—

  —Because, it’s like, what can …? What should …? Should I run after them …?

  —Should I—?

  —I mean, do I let this just—?

  —Do I just surrender everything that I, and just—?

  —But, you know, which one—?

  —Which—?

  —Which direction …?

  —And like what – what if I choose – if it isn’t the best—?

  —But what do you think: That this is random? That this is arbitrary …? This is the way things should be. There’s no newspaper because people don’t want a newspaper. If there’s no library, it’s because people do not need to use one any more. Things are going exactly as they should. Folks are competent in deciding what to put in their front yard. They are capable, intelligent, conscious agents who—

  —Call it reason. Call it eros. Call it the appetitive soul. Whatever: what’s driving this is the human need for progress, for development, our irrepressible, history-spawning instinct to make things better, to push towards—

  —I don’t care what Randall Yurman or Dobey Willis does, or what they think. I am my own man, and I am going because I want to go, because it is my choice to ups—

  —Reducing, cutting, rendering leaner, meaner, tougher – that’s the route of advancement, that’s the way of the world. And not only in terms of blind efficiency – there’s a deep-seated human urge to get to the essence, to strip away the unnecessary, to delacquer, unvarnish—

  —I can taste it now, I can feel it, we are flexing petals in the flowering of spirit, riding, realizing Hegelian freedom, both catalyzing and incarnating its inexorable ascension—

  —You get that?: Quitters don’t win, and winners don’t—

  —Yes! Pomerory Park’s basketball courts have been resurfaced. In our trim and tidy little park we – yes we! – have refurbished concrete, we have an inspiring new mellow-brown backboard and repainted boundary lines! Yes, its true! Those ground-lines are mouth-wateringly white and everything is ready for play …!

  Hey, thanks, A-burg, for telling us that, thanks for draping a huge blue-lettered banner all across Battery Street to let us know that the basketball courts are—

  Thursday dusk tucks itself into the corners of the unample room. Blues turn to brown, browns to slate gray. Carol gets up from her woven couch.

  She turns back to Rick, still sitting on the couch. Wow, she says. It’s, like, interesting to be at a point where you can’t be alt-anything.

  Yeah, Rick says.

  Interesting like in a little scary …

  Carol sits back down. Then gets up again, and crosses the room. She stops in place, vexes her hands, returns to sit by Rick. Brings one knee up and pivots to face him.

  Sweets, she says. Dear one. That guy from Dartmouth is not calling, OK? I’m sorry, but – face it. Physical Chemistry will be getting along without you.

  Yeah, Rick says. I was coming around to the same unfortunately data-driven conclusion myself—

  So, good, then, OK?, Carol says. We’re free. We’re free to do what we want, to try something we want, and not just wait for the structure to put out. We are walking away from dependency. Even the dependency of opposition.

  Rick breathes. Optimistic—

  Well, that’s what we have. That’s our trump.

  But it isn’t just optimism, Carol continues. It’s also realism – it’s our realism. When nothing is happening, everything is needed, OK? So almost by definition, anything is possible.

  Come on, C—

  Exactly, Carol says. There you got it. Come on—

  —Sure, it’s a little tense in there. Sure we are like constantly aware that Camiel is gone: we’ve been playing pot-limit Texas Hold ’em with him for like four or five years, how could it be otherwise? But then, on Wednesday, when Mickey got up in the middle of a hand – when he just stood up and walked away, leaving his cards and his stake right there on the table, knocking Jason’s chair for a screech – we didn’t know what the hell was – was he just bluffing? Time for a doobie? Was it a strategy thing? The cards were face down. So was this some new kind of gambit he learned or was he like—?

  —And still – still … Online …? Nothing. Not one thing that I can find. I Google Anderburg, and upstake, and upstaking, and I’ll be damned if there isn’t a single—

  —And they’ve given ’em these like yellow-green like jump- suits, like full-body uniforms covered with lines and squares of this like glowing LOUD lime-yellow color, and the only thing they do, the only thing they do, is go around town sweeping up coupon books and advertising brochures and flyers and all like that. And when the brooms won’t get ’em, they just bend down and pick ’em up – with their hands! That’s all they do, rub their knuckles on the ground, they don’t touch nothing else – the damn city is paying this entire separate fucking brigade, and who knows how much, when they should be—!

  —Hey, you been over to December 31st Bakery? Like within the last two-three days? ’Cause they got a new policy over there: Pay what you want. Yup. Anything you want, anything you’re drooling all over your chin about, just give ’em what you’re willing to fork over. And they smile about it too. You believe that shit?

  Hey, maybe it does make sense – get what you can get. Adaptation equals numero uno for survival. Ach, they’re probably just deeply dialed in: after all, hamantashen want to be free.

  But what do I fuckin’ know—

  —OK? OK …? I saw it – I saw it with my own fucking eyes, right on little residential Manhattan Drive. The cops – or some kind of smash-you-good SWAT team, some guys in strapped-on dark blue combat-kind of uniforms and BIG fucking lace-up boots – they hauled up in two green inside-sealed trucks and exploded out and swarmed the lawn and rang the door bell and as soon as the door opened they stormed in and pulled this guy and this woman from the house. Grabbed them, yanked them, there was no appeal in this case: the cops hauled the couple off and dragged their ankles across the lawn and into the trucks and throomed away and that was that, man. That was that—

  They’re sitting in New Ethic Café now, of a Tuesday afternoon. Carol nurses an o
ff-white mug of tea, fingers straddling heat. Rick has gone with coffee. Not decaf.

  Really, man, it’s an opportunity, Carol says, after sipping, lifting with her tongue, swallowing. Ask any of the guys in the fifteen-percent bracket: you always buy when the market’s down. And the best first-time investment is a set of cojones.

  Rick swirls his coffee.

  So here’s what I was thinking, Carol says. Here it is. We open – or start – an employment agency—

  Wha—?

  Yeah, Carol says, and looks up, and pins Rick with her eyes. It’s a great idea, and absolutely the time is right. The government agency? All gone. I went by last week and the whole thing is shut down. The dirt’s still there – on the windows and all up and down the hall that leads to the big door – but no one’s inside and the whole place is dark. And Adesso – the private company that does hiring – they pushed on maybe three weeks ago. There is no one doing this now, and the need, as we can attest, is gigantic.

  OK …, Rick says. But if the private company pulled out, then that’s a sure indicator that demand isn’t suf—

  Uh uh, Carol says, and puts down her cup. What it shows is that the model – the old model – no longer works. The old scheme was based on a promise of continuity – of predictability – that doesn’t hold around here any more. Companies in A-burg don’t want to pay fees to employment agencies for workers who are just going to split. The fee’s usually based on a percentage of annual salary, but now no employer wants to do it because they don’t think they’ll get their money’s worth. And like where the agency charges the job-hunter – these deals exist – the guy-to-be-hired also doesn’t want to remit for a gig that may evaporate next Monday. It’s self-reinforcing and entirely incapacitating. No one’s too eager to pay for the right to wave farewell—

  —And did you see this …? I mean, of course the government’s gotta keep up routine maintenance …the whole thing’d fall apart if they let the roads go or the garbage or the parks got all squalid … if they didn’t do the essentials …but now they’re going around cleaning up private lawns and driveways, trimming people’s personal hedges …I mean, those are city workers out there on private peoples property, the city’s providing trucks and blowers and weeders and sanitation suits for just normal people …I mean look at them going way beyond the sidewalk, picking up leaves and waste-paper debris and—

  —OK. It is fine. It is necessary. I accept what they’re doing. But I’m supposed to pay for it? I am supposed to support the upkeep and grooming of the estates of those who did not have the backbone, the discipline to stand pat and take care of their own …? To continue normal responsibility for their own homes, their own—?

  —Sure, there were no announcements made. That a surprise? Does the government need to pat itself on the back in public every time it does something for us? Look at those nice yards. You get a glow. And so will buyers. And if the government starts going around all toot-tooting what it’s doing – well, that might work against us, against our interests, that might work very efficiently against all our interests—

  —So OK, then, OK: we, the stayers, we should get a percentage of the sales price when—

  —Man I – just let me go, you know what I’m – I have, I have got to get out of—

  Here’s where we step up to the plate, Carol says, a few moments later. Nobody in the job market here wants to be stung on up-front costs. So we wave them. We work on a percentage of salary – classical model – but on a weekly basis – radical revision. And this through the first year. So the employer – or the employee, for that matter, if they want to go that way – sends us five percent per week for as long as the work-situation continues, up to a maximum of fifty weeks. See the beauty? No exposure to unrecoupables, if that’s a word. Remove the front-end risk, swerve to win-massive-win.

  Carol saucers her cup, smiles at Rick. Sound familiar?, she says.

  Rick raises his eyes from his dregs. Where do you get your ideas, he says.

  Carol smiles again. Your solar project is finally generating energy, she says.

  They talk logistics. Carol will start calling on center-city employers – over the past weeks, she’s met a few back-officers and storefronters where prospects are minimally conceivable – and talk up friends. Rick will work on a name, on a logo, on tax ramifications, on his deadstop unthinkable no-way resistance to using his one-room walk-up as mission control. Carol, unasked, grants a fifty-fifty split. They order second rounds; Rick switches to tea.

  This ain’t gonna be easy, Carol says, between sips. We’re fighting the wind.

  Yeah, Rick says. A billion nearly invisible elements—

  Against two really invisible ones, Carol says. But two who know that visibility is overrated …

  So: you down for this?, Carol says. You down?

  —Well, OK now. Can recognize it from a hundred yards off. The van pulling up. The round-arm guys jumping out. The tail-gate down and the dollies and the straps. Big cardboard boxes floating up the walkway. Up and into the front of the house, its screen door somehow propped open.

  So how ’bout that. Somebody’s moving into one thirty-six. And the new man – if that’s him – well, he looks OK. Clean and working right along with the movers. Looks like a nice guy.

  —Of course, man, of course … What do you do with a mistake …? You fix it, you abort it, you brutally remove – you cut your losses and put the fucking thing to rest …

  Don’t you see the logic …? This – this town – is the microcosmos on auto-correct, curing itself, cleansing itself, perfective processes are taking hold … Taking over to accomplish what we, selfish dusts, will not – can not – do on our own … It’s perfectly, inhumanly humanist, a great leap forward … So truncate this shit, truncate all of it, of course this is happening, it is the earth’s song of affirmation—

  Rick looks up to Carol, drops back to his tea.

  Yeah, he says. I mean, I suppose I can give it a try.

  Good, Carol says. I mean, great, man. Let’s jump into this thing—

  Though I gotta tell you, C, Rick says. I mean, I really wonder why. We’re supposed to build something here? In our little city of the plain? The place needs restorer circuits, overrides—

  Rick – sure, yeah, of course. You think you’re saying something new? But somehow, you know, somehow we have to re-begin something here, to jump-start history. Of course there are no second acts in A-burgian life. We’re so far beyond that we can’t even dream of second acts any more. By now we’re all into our fiftieth act, our hundred and second act. We’ve been given over to a necessity of perpetual re-beginning. OK? So let’s call ourselves what we are: absolute re-beginners. People for whom mastering one re-beginning is just preparation for re-beginning again …

  I mean, come on, Rick, I’ve lived in A-burg my whole damn life. I been here thirty-eight years, when, at least for part of it, I could have been in Boston, or could have been in Rome … And you know I never once even saw the back of a helping hand, never had a job I really liked, and let’s not even go to subject A. And that’s OK, you know, A-OK: one thing I do own is my destiny, even a baby won’t change that. So Rick, doll, here’s where we are, here is where we find ourselves, let’s make something out of that, OK—?

  I like what you’re saying.

  The voice came from the diner-side of the booth, where neither Carol nor Rick had been looking. When they turn to the sound, they see a no-longer-youngish man with leapy dark- blond hair, fair but corrugated skin, beard-sprinkles, niblike teeth, a pea coat, and jeans.

  Don’t mean to bother you, but …, the man says. I mean, my name’s Ian.

  —And at the end of the day, y’know, out they go, the lettuces and the bananas for example, out they get tossed into the crates they came in or right into the dumpsters they never expected to see, but there they lie in heaps falling apart anyway, huge metal lids lowered down. We gots to be losing fifty, sixty percent of what shows up here every morning, not only that
day’s stuffbut all that kindsa food that’s been in the bins two, three, four days and going scraggling and going brown. We even be throwing out avocados and kiwis and honeydew melons and it seems like everything else that comes in, and the customers are like yes sir, no, we don’t want none of it, then when they wanna take it no one except the flies wants it no more—

  —Get out. Run. The compromises, the concessions, the everpresent heartjab – they have never been worth it, never one second, you have always known this, known it down to your shuddering cells, known it so deeply that you could not permit yourself to whisper it to your hungering ear, for fear of what it would do. But now, here, you have been made able to admit it, to confess your crimes against yourself, to hear the permanent howling that you convert to smiling silence. So go. Just go.

  Carol invites the man to sit. He pulls into the booth beside Rick, apologizes when his forward knee swipes Rick’s thigh. When, after a moment, he doesn’t make the gesture for ordering, Carol calls for another cup of tea.

  Eventually, the man – Ian – speaks. He says he had been in the booth behind Carol – the fact makes Rick fluster, he hadn’t seen him – and that he couldn’t help being drawn into what they were saying – about the hiring agency, about everything. He’s sorry if he’s eavesdropping, but it all sounded so good, so important, so valuable that he just kept getting snagged. Especially the agency: he knows people – lots – who could benefit. He’s wondering if he could lend a hand.

  Carol is touched, Rick defers opinion. Without prompting, Ian goes on. For the last six to seven years, he says, he has been without a fixed address.

  Yeah, I’d been working doing lumber finishing over in Albany, he says. You know, most of the time maintaining the stripping equipment, sometimes doing backup on shipping. Then, you know how it goes, cost-cutting – new competition up in Swanton – and my girl had had enough, but Jimmy my landlord never did and I for sure couldn’t get enough of that old white sniff. Whew yeah sure, you know how it goes, so I improvised, you know, and I’m straight now, but it’s been a few years and dammit, I just want to—