by Evan Dara
Carol looks at him. Thanks, man, she says.
Come on, Carol, Ian says. This is—!
He goes to John and, beaming, shakes his hand.
Fallows smiles. So, OK, he says. Today’s agenda.
Carol, Rick, and Ian sit on the couch, after Carol had checked, exhaustively, that nothing lies hidden within the coffee service. Fallows leans on a desk.
So, Fallows says. I’ve put in a request, and we should be able to get two desktops in here by next week. I can guarantee you they won’t be this year’s Dells, but the Wi-Fi in this building is very good.
Mike’s – Farina’s – made that kind of a priority.
Great, Rick says.
Also, Fallows says, and I hope you don’t mind this – I hope you approve of this – but I’ve taken a few steps to see about getting you included on the city’s website. Its main website, hopefully right there in a corner on the first screen, so—
John, Carol says. I mean, that would be amazing.
Fallows smiles. Thank you, he says. I mean the point is to make you central, to make you or legitimize you as the people in Anderburg to come to for employment purposes. To get you front and center.
And then, if we can get something going there, he continues, then I’m going to see about having you handle screening and hiring for A-burg itself. For the city’s own staffing and temp support. I mean, this is just a thought, it is absolutely a dream. But I’ve been asking around – but Jeez, you know, there are so many new people in City Hall, and most of them I don’t even know yet, I don’t even know which strings to pull – but someone really should be coordinating all this new personnel. And if you guys are so central and so plugged in, then it would make sense for it to be you. That would require another look at your financial relations with the city, but if it happens—
When it happens, Ian says.
—Pilgrim’s Pride marinated chicken wings: ninety-nine cents a pound.
Quaker Oats one-minute mix: two eighty-nine for the big one.
Hi-C Blazin’ Blueberry: one fifteen!
Haven’t seen prices like this since what: 1982? And you get coupons, and you get free delivery. And you get a smile at the check-out.
And I ain’t jumping. No way. Better to wait, even just til tomorrow. Even better – wait til next week! No Ma’am, starting today, I ain’t going for anything I don’t absolutely need …
It’s what.
It’s weird. It’s unnatural.
And …what.
It’s nice.
They stand and crowd the gray, hatboxlike package, placed in the center of the second desk. Ian had arrived with this mysterious container, bundled in a mini-market’s white plastic sack, and while neither Carol nor Rick had asked him about it, both had been harboring flagrant hopes. John had sensed something, and had gone down the hall and returned with plastic forks, paper plates, a metal knife, and napkins, taken from a storage spot the codes to which Carol and Rick have yet to earn. Now, as the four stare down at the silent cardboard oracle, tension, tension—
Ta da!, Ian says, lifting the box’s lid over its hinge.
From Carol, Rick, and John, lusty ooooh’s.
lan says, Isn’t it – Oh, boy!
This woman I know, Jan, she gave it to me, Ian says. She was a cook – a chef, rather you’d say – and when I took her number and told her she’s in the running for what we’re so fine, fine doing here well, voilà the resuit.
It’s a fondant, Ian continues, looking down to the dense brown mass, shaped like a tiny airplane hangar. It’s spelled f-o-n-d-a-n-t, but you pronounce it fawndawn. That little surgical nick on the left end there – you see them slight, raking-type marks? – that’s what’s now known as the point of no resistance. The point where – well, someone had to make sure your-all’s fine palates were not offended. Which I assume, though you probably don’t pardon, you entirely understand.
Plates and forks flash through the circle.
—Hey: I process the accounts, OK? I know, OK? Actually, I help process the accounts, but I see them, and the paperwork, that’s the only thing you can believe these days. And so what I can tell you, loud and strong, is that A-burg, City Hall, they’re sending all sorts of bucks to Klix and to Contrast, you know, the cable television companies? OK? – they’re subsidizing them. Yup. And while this other one isn’t as clear, I also think they’re picking up the slack with Green Hills Power. You believe that? I don’t know if the city’s being shaken down or if they offered it, or if the State’s kicking in, but if you want to know what they’re doing with our tax money, and without telling us, and without any possible, possible justification that I can see—
—Here’s where the demand curve kicks in. One would think that supply inefficiencies – rising storage costs, diminishing numbers of providers, reduced cross-vectoring for all distribution matrices, restrictions if not impossibilities of scaling – would offset negative pricing factors. But they haven’t. Demand falloff has been too steep. I just picked up four bags of brown tar from out west at a price, twelve bills per, that was just around twenty percent lower than what I scored at last month. And while I can’t guarantee top-flight purity – my guess here, despite all the publicity, is around thirty percent – the stuff was nice. And delusional I am not: Craig, my buddy, last guy up in fixed income – well, he thought so, too—
—Well, I haven’t seen it. But somebody tells me about it every, like, two days by now, its like the fewer the people, the more often I hear about this fucking thing – but I have never met or encountered one person who has personally been through … What happens to them? This sickness or illness that’s supposed to be going around – lays you out, man, I heard, makes you wish you couldn’t wish no more – it’s supposed to be, like someone said it’s in the food, with so much of it coming from one supplier now … And still the city doesn’t say nothing? … So isn’t that an indication, the best indication … Will they do anything to fucking keep us here—?
—And what I heard from Melissa Krassner? On Williston Road, where she worked, in the travel agency there?, she went back last week to pick up a seat cushion she had brought in for herself and had forgotten, her chair had been wood and hard hard hard, and in her old office, same place, there were new people in there, new people working, and the front door had a new sign up, saying RAD Company. And when she went in, and asked to speak with a manager, then got around to asking some girl there what it meant, some girl I assume was working there?, and when Melissa found out it was Rent a Dad, she ended up leaving without the cushion—
—And in my dreams, now, again last night: A shower still running. A PC mouse single-clicked. A half-consumed bowl of blueberries …
I am near Mount Vesuvius. And I see the eruption, in the distance. I see the sun-tide coming, flooding, slaloming, slurping at the sides of the mountain. And I stand and open my arms, and I welcome the churning, scalding, tsunami embrace …
Nine-fifteen on a Wednesday night, and Carol has risen to the occasion and made curry. The first pumpkins of the season had arrived, and she’d pounced. Stirred in onions, zucchini, extra coriander, and a few potatoes for texture, going all the way with the non-shortcut recipe. She’d also brought in Navigator bock, an ideal, in her mind, complement. Rick was near the bottom of a second bottle.
With dinner finished, and all pans and plates dealt with – well, stacked by the sink for now – Carol and Rick sit cross-legged on C’s couch, facing each other. Skin auras and unhurriedness speak of higher satiety. Two spindly standing lamps stage small solar eclipses, hoods turned towards walls. Beth Orton haunts from the small speakers.
Carol finishes a sip of tea. Of course we can’t afford it, she says. That’s why now’s a good time to do it.
She smiles at Rick. We can’t afford anything, she continues. Our situation wouldn’t change a bit. We’d still have all the advantages of absolute destitution.
She smiles again, reaches over, puts a hand on Rick’s dark- haired nape, curls
it there. It’s true, you know, she says. Rental prices must be so down, someone might even accept an offer that we can make.
Rick nods. I thought you like this apartment, he says.
Oh, yeah, Carol says. Love it. Love it so much that, well, you see that valise over there? Right there in the corner? I’ve left it all conspicuous like that so I’Il know exactly where to find it when the time comes to grab it again.
She exhales. Rick, it’s been two years …
Two reasonably good years, of course, Carol continues. But, you know, for someone like me, two years is …two years.
Come on, Rick, she says. Would you … I mean, I saw something about it, and they say a woman’s fertility just falls off a cliff at forty-one, then absolutely collapses at forty-three. So sure, yeah, we can wait for the employment business to take off, but then – but by then I’ll really be in there …
Rick, looking down, sips his lager.
Besides, I thought you said you like change, she says. That it’s the way of the world, discontinuous functions, rupture as the seedbed of revelation – all that. This would be a massive act of opening up to the new. To the good, as you put it. Subject A would really become the first in a new sequence …
Absolutely, man, no other way, Carol continues. It’ll be the catalyst that’ll change the dynamics of our whole friggin’ field. Really break us out of our patterns. You’ll be forced out of being in your head so much. I’ll learn to—
I’ll learn to finish things.
Rick stays still. Hm, he says.
Besides, Carol says, then think of it as a gift to the community, an effort to rebuild. We can help repopulate, contribute in the opposite direction …
OK, Carol says. Yeah. Not my best argument.
The other thing, you know, she continues. Maybe we can get government support. They do that in France, you know, and in Italy and Israel and lots of other places. No reason we couldn’t make a play for that here. Hey, with John on our side …
Rick continues looking down. He dawdles his bottle.
You know, I’m touched by this, he says. I’m touched by you. I mean, there’s no tension here, I feel no, like, pressure beyond, what, the normal give-and-take of a conversation. And I appreciate that.
Thanks—
But darlin’, I mean, my mind keeps coming back to the idea if this is really the time …
What can we expect to build here?, he says, looking up at Carol. I mean, sure, the business’s going OK, going well. But come on: that’s as sure as anything else and the groundlessness, the continuing earthquakes and aftershocks don’t – well, they really don’t seem conducive to what a child needs. What I assume he needs …
So yes, of course, I’ll think about it again. And I do think it’s a real possibility, that it would be a great thing.
Beautiful, Carol says. That’s really—
But, I mean, Car, Rick says. I mean, I wouldn’t even know what to give to a child, with everything like sand in an hourglass. I mean, I don’t even know what’s left of me any more. So where’s, like, the foundation here? Where is the starting block—
The starting block is anywhere we want to put it, OK?, Carol says, and gets up. I mean, Rick, man, you surprise me. Why all this dependence? Why this derivativeness? Rick, whether you like it or not, you are you, OK?, and there is no reason to generalize your Personal situation. You only lose yourself, your truth, when you diffuse yourself out like that. You lose clarity – you lose, like, the possibility of difference, of going out from yourself. Everything just becomes an example of something else, in this insulated, constantly recycling little loop of confirmation.
And what we are, OK?, is us, she continues. You and me, right here, and what you and me want to make of our lives, or at least try and make of them, all on our own. Earthquakes, aftershocks, and all.
Carol returns to sit. Slips a sway of hair behind one ear. Come on, Rickie …, she says. A baby will anchor us. It’ll root us in reality, in a territory. It’ll give us a stake …
Rick finishes a swig. But you said we shouldn’t rely so much on someone else, he says.
Especially when the someone else isn’t there, Carol says.
She looks to her hands, folded in her lap. Rick, please be open to this, OK?, she says. When I cry, I want my tears to water something, some small, gravelly patch that’s mine. That’s ours …
And a baby, man. A baby … Rick, sweetheart, that’s something they can’t take away—
—My skis. My nice four-speed blender. My bookshelves, my printer, all my silverware, my wine rack. They are yours, you can have them. I will have no yard sale, and I have no one to give them to. As long as you do something with them, as long as you have some use for them they are yours, whoever you are—
—Finally, out of—
—Yes, finally: free!
—Shame on, to—
—I try, you know, I try to – to commit and resist and maintain brave face. To drive my pilings right straight into the ground. Then, on Sunday, I’m sitting in my living room, in my own home, pulling myself through the July receipts, and I look out my window and see a man, somewhat in stealth, certainly in silence, I see this man in a magenta track suit and tennis shoes sprint across my neighbor’s lawn and pull Genise and Alexei Ratmansky from their house. One by one, first Genise, then Alexei – both of them are in their eighties – this man guides them by the shoulder and the elbow and toddles them across the lawn, then presses them into his car. The car’s two rear doors were waiting open at curbside. Was it – do they have a son? And the car’s motor was left running, and snap the man closes the doors, jumps in behind the wheel and they gun off. And standing in the middle of the lawn, in the middle of this Entebbe, the sprinkler, circling, stuttering, spraying—
—Oh yeah they are doing what they do best. Mm hm, what else do you expect, they are doing what they got to, what they always do, the motherplucking city government has announced they’re imposing what they call an evacuation tax. Yes, that is correct. What it means, how they’re going to enforce it – who cares, that’s next week, you just open up your hurting pockets right now and we’ll deal with the details when now they’re taxing—!
—Fuck ’em. I worked my ass off for those guys when they were going great guns and hauling, seven in the morning to ten at night – shit: ten at night plus – seven fucking days a week. Fuck that Cozy, now that he’s slowing down he shitcans me without a blink, We did our work, You did your job great, man, so good there just ain’t that many people left to do it for, hauling beds and rugs that droop and big motherfucking crush your shoulders cabinets down the fucking stairs and up onto the truck. Pads down, strap ’em in, show the numbers on the boxes and most of all get ’em out quick, keep things moving! Shit, didn’t even get a week or two, not even a chit for a meal, no thanks at all when he’s hauling it in like that. Suppose he still wants me to keep talking about oooh this ridiculous thing going around, this untreatable disease, keep mentioning what I heard or what I think I heard, shitty thing to do, so OK now I will keep mentioning it, but to the right people, to the people who should know it, the people who can bring some sickness to Mr. shit-eater Cozy himself—
—Finally, finally, we’ve been given an outgate from the monstrous bargain made for us before birth …the lion-, no, deer-trap set by the countless, the unknowable tumbling generations before us …the overcostly experiment, the endless trade-offs through which we end up trading away everything, o everything that could ever provide—
—Look at your scars. Look at them, if you can. Then tell me: is it worth it—?
—I’m jumpy, now, every time someone comes through the door. Every time the phone rings. And there’s just more and more, more and more. Dr. Rausch must be about the last practicing GP in town – Dr. Mazzini only works two afternoons a week, he’s near retirement – and so everyone’s, everything’s, coming in here. Yesterday a girl had cut herself all up and down the insides of her arms. Razor blades! Two days before, anoth
er young girl had burned – using a soldering gun – she burned …
She burned herself, brown welts all around her eyes. Around this poor girl’s eyes. And just one person after another walking in and quickly walking out with scripts for Zoloft, or Wellbutrin, strong, serious anti-depressants, SSRIs. Hate to process their paperwork.
No one who comes in ever talks to me about why they’re here. I just get auto-spin and formalities, but in their faces you can see the combination of shame and relief, and of course I say nothing, too. But I want to. I want to say: I love you down to the last droplet in my heart. I feel so terribly for you, and for every one of the people near you. My city is so beautiful, all the syncopated Queen Anne buildings and oh, the elegant Federal style all through downtown and all the Gothic Revival. And the sun and the trees this time of year. I do not want to be here any more.
—And I place the second knapsack – the one with the strap broken – on the back seat, and I look to check that I put the carton of small waters on the floor behind the driver’s seat, even though I know it’s there, and now there can not possibly be anything left to do, and I slam the passenger-side rear door and jog around the back of the car and jump back in up front and just look at the dash. Look at the dash.
Now the engine is on. First gas and, gloriously, I don’t know where I’m going, I’m not sure of one single turn after the big one onto Route 7 – though truth be told, I’m heading in the general direction of my cousin in Macon. Of course I’ve got a bunch of maps, they’re spread on the seat beside me, a whole colorful nest of lines and folds, hatching my future, but the whole country, this whole country, is open to me, it is waiting for me now, it has become, for me, a land full of promise, and a promised land. Sal would understand.
Making my first turn, I go giddy: I gleam with adrenalin, my solar plexus soars. I am out. I am gone. God, thank you, it is behind me, it is at this moment coursing away from me—