by Ginger Booth
She thwacked him. “Don’t ever pray on me again. I was afraid you were apologizing to God for having sex with me. If He punished us for that, with rapists, He’s a sadist!”
“Hey, hey! I believe in God. Just not like that. Don’t worry. I don’t regret making love to you. I hope you don’t.”
“You know I don’t!”
“Good.” His voice took on a sing-song edge. “Time to face the world, baby girl.”
“No. It’s a cold, cruel – Eek!” The bastard threw the blankets off. That got her moving.
Ava sidled up to Kat in the dojo, where Frosty was holding court a half hour later. While making sure their water supplies were secure, and everybody got their share last night, she overlooked one small detail – she forgot to procure any for herself and Frosty. She refilled their gallon bottles from the 5-gallon jug downstairs, drawing glares from people already pissed off about the long line in single-digit temperatures before squatting over a storm grate.
The room finished applauding again for Brawnda, Ava and Kat right up front to model enthusiasm.
“Next,” Frosty continued, “I want a volunteer. This critical job takes a very special person. One we rely on, the whole gang, to do it right. Our eternal thanks, our health and well-being, will rest on this guy’s shoulders. Or maybe a girl. Who will be our hygiene hero?”
With that build-up, he earned a few chuckles from the freezing crowd. Ava tried to smile around the room with them. Could he really pull this off? To her amazement, a guy sauntered forth, well over 6’ tall, but his body hadn’t caught up to the growth spurt yet, leaving narrow shoulders paired with big puppy hands and feet. Germy baptized him Beanpole.
“I, my lord Frosty! I shall slay this dragon! Call me – Johnny.” He clapped ski mitt to his heart, his sunken chest well hidden in heavy dark coat. He bowed.
Frosty laughed and stood to lead a strong round of applause for ‘Johnny.’ “Outstanding, Johnny! Speaking of out, and standing. Let’s not.”
“Fear not, great Frosty!” Johnny clearly intended to milk his moment of glory. “I’m thinking buckets inside.”
“I like this,” Frosty encouraged. “It’s fucking cold out there.”
Johnny nodded. “And we should really wash our hands. And squatting – I don’t think most of us are truly prepared for squatting.”
“Exactly! I’d like to sit. Out of the wind,” Frosty mused. “With no smell.”
Johnny demurred, “That last part, oh fearless leader…”
“I can dream. OK, everybody! Your health depends on this! My health depends on this. I don’t know how, but you will wash your hands! Every time! If you poop or pee, vomit or bleed or even spit, anywhere outside a designated bucket or storm sewer, you clean it up. If you ‘forget’,” Frosty provided air quotes, “and use a toilet or sink, or don’t reach the potty in time, there will be consequences. Absolutely! And remember, we’re short on water.”
Johnny embellished this with, “And today we may be a little rustic. But we will improve!”
“Absolutely! And if Johnny asks you to do something – you do it. He has my blessing to tap anyone for an hour’s work, any time. Cooperate!” Frosty waved for Johnny to step back into the choir, his solo complete.
“You know what I want right now?” The gang leader mused dreamily. “I want a mug of hot water. Doesn’t that sound good? Start the day with steam wafting into my sinuses. My hands curled around a nice hot mug. My tummy all warm.” He batted his eyes at Panic and Kat. “A birthday wish, perhaps.”
Ava sighed and nodded. That sounded awesome. Maybe she could even find him hot cocoa mix with little marshmallows. His birthday was a couple weeks away. It wasn’t too much to ask. “I’ll look into it!”
Frosty beamed at her. “Thank you, Panic. And now! Let us venture forth, and steal some food, shall we?” He pumped a fist through a few little speed-bag circles, then thrust it straight up. Then he settled down to assign his forces for the day.
January 8, E-day plus 31.
Ava fought her hair back into her knit cap, and zipped the coat all the way up. Working on her latest project outside in the cross-street crosswind was miserable. But she couldn’t test it indoors, in case it exploded in her face. Preferably without lighting her hair on fire. She shot a glare at the trio of black teen boys lurking outside, posing as bad-ass rappers.
If one more of them sang about raping a honky ass ho, they were going to regret it.
Which was why they were out here on the street with her. Frosty overheard them and promised to kill them if they so much as thought those words again in his presence. He went on to share his personal views on hip-hop, male chauvinism, and ebonic ghetto-speak prison culture in general, until Maz manhandled the bastards out here to bother her.
Frosty was already cranky today. She tweezed out the stitches from his cheek this morning before they went gleaning. The procedure hurt like hell, and he didn’t want to admit the pain. Then pretty boy was not happy when he studied his face in the bathroom mirror. Ava smirked. Maybe she should have used more stitches. But the wound healed, without infection. The cut was still red for now, but that would fade. She assured him he was still gorgeous, just tougher than his old elfin air. He’d get over it.
She focused back on her latest baby. The longer Kat was here, the more Ava wondered how she’d made it through their first week without her. Of course, the gang claimed 80 members now, including the social rejects she was trying to ignore. They picked up those idiots yesterday. Keeping the gang organized and policed took more effort.
But Kat bought Ava time to play with her ‘engineering,’ bwa-ha-ha! She crouched before a low-slung TV stand, with one of two toilet holes cut out. The guy doing the jigsaw work for her was pulled off onto another task. That gave her time to play with her prize new find, a Coleman stove. The toilet-TV bench had enough structural integrity to hold it off the ground.
One might think lots of homes had camp stoves. And in fact Ava’s family had one, and she’d camped with it on many happy occasions. Just not since she moved to Manhattan when she was 12. She’d never lit the family stove, and certainly never played with its fuel tank. Tata did the honors. Then Mama sold all their camping gear when they decided to stay for Ava to attend the oh-so-competitive Brooklyn Tech. They stowed their outdoorsy gear in a U-Store-It type place out in Queens, not in the pricey cubic inside a cramped Manhattan apartment. This Coleman was the first Ava had found in two weeks of gleaning.
After consulting with Brawnda, who still kept custody of their best survival manual, Ava carefully filled the Coleman Fuel tank with rubbing alcohol. Now was the moment of truth. Would it light? Did she have all the pieces assembled correctly?
“Fuck dat ho up da ass!”
That tore it. Ava turned and hollered. “You shut up and get lost! Get the fuck away from me!”
“Oh, she thinks I’m sexy!”
“Yah, she wants me to fuck her up the ass!”
“Bring me yo’ honky cunt!”
These guys were just hamming it up for each other, laughing and slapping each other in congratulations. The filth they spoke was straight off the top of their music charts. They trash-talked all the time to show each other they were cool. She might as well be furniture. Their crap had nothing to do with her.
Except it did.
The rapists at Penn Station were black, too. They spoke to her like that, too.
Ava leapt up on pure adrenaline and assumed a horse stance, her hands on guard, chapped and bare in the cold dry wind. And why should that worry them? If they noticed her yesterday at fight clinic, she was the little chick who babysat the ankle-biters.
“Oh, we gonna dance with the little ho!” Fool one punctuated his jibe with hip thrusts.
Thanks for the target, asshole! Ava planted a full-force straight kick right in his balls. And yes, Sensei, she did kick like a horse, thank you very much. She wheeled on fool two.
The third slipped behind her, shrieking. “You gone fu
ck with us? You take this, bitch!” He grabbed one end of the toilet bench in progress and flipped it over. Her prize Coleman stove clattered to the icy ground in the kitty litter, and the bench cracked, never again to have the strength to bear a couple rumps about their business.
Ava screeched, an ear-splitting animal snarl of outrage. Her round-house kick took the second fool in the jaw.
12
January 8, E-day plus 31.
Frosty and Maz erupted from the dojo to Ava’s aid. They asked no questions. The three black fools had already been kicked out here for cause. In one punch, Maz sent fool number three flying. Then he wheeled to yank fool two out of the way before Frosty could land his second punch.
Ava was freed to stomp on fool one’s face. She kicked him in the temple as he lay there writhing and clutching his balls. Then Maz caught her up around the waist and she switched to hammering at him with both fists.
“Stand down, hell-cat!” Maz demanded. “It’s over!”
“Give her over.” Frosty ripped her out of Maz’s arms and hugged her close, facing him. From there she could only punch him in the kidneys, which she did. He jimmied her around to face outward, and held both of her arms wrapped around her middle.
Then he turned to the fools. “You’re done. You are out of here.” He sidestepped to block one from the door, Ava perforce stumbling along with him. “No, you’re not going back inside. You’re not saying good-bye. No one will miss you. Ever. You’re dead to us.”
“We was just –”
“You fucked with my girlfriend, is what you did. You’re a waste of oxygen. You’re a missing link in man’s search for wisdom. You’re idiots. Get lost! Do not come back here. Or I’ll kill you with my bare hands!”
Maz stood arms crossed by the spilled Coleman stove. “Only if I don’t kill you first,” he vowed to the black trio. “We are incompatible species. Get out! If you’re not gone by the count of three: one, two –”
They ran toward 7th Avenue, the other two half-carrying the one Ava worked over. He was bleeding from the temple, his head lolling. He barely managed to stumble along between his friends.
Ava smirked. Counting magic. She used it on the kids. Funny how she never needed to specify what she was threatening. The scary numbers sufficed.
Then she had the sudden thought that they were getting away. They knew the dojo. They knew their security arrangements. Though if she’d stopped to think, she’d notice that they didn’t know squat. It wasn’t as though the gang brought in new recruits and gave them a grand tour of the inner secrets. But thinking was not Ava’s forte at the moment.
“Yah!” Relying on Frosty’s arms to hold her up, she jackknifed her legs up to kick at thin air. As she came down, he prudently got his own legs out of her way and loosened her, only holding one arm enough to keep her from landing on her ass. “Let’s get them –!”
Frosty reeled her in to immobilize her again. “Stop, baby. Sh…” He kissed the top of her head. “No more blacks in this gang. Or any other race. White middle class only.”
Maz scratched his nose. “Frostman, let’s calm down. Then talk about it.”
“They were black. They raped me. They raped her. And there was nothing I could do to stop them. And they talk disgusting gibberish, nonstop pornographic misogyny. Except the ones who spew moronic religiosity. I hate them. Do you hear me? They can find animals like themselves to hang with. I won’t lift a finger to keep a black like them alive. They have no place in my gang.”
Maz scuffed his sneaker along the sidewalk, and shook his head. “This goes against everything you are, Cade.”
“CADE IS DEAD!”
At that, Ava at last cooled in his arms, nearly holding her breath in sudden concern. In his signature Frosty the Snowman fighting style, icy and unflappable, her beloved was one hell of a fighter. She hoped never to see him fight angry, out of control, the way she just had. They were black belts. They knew better. She should never have lost her cool. Her inner Sensei demoted her on the spot.
But, but –! Her face crumpled in furious tears. “How did we get so broken?” She buried her nose in Frosty’s chest.
“You are not broken, baby,” Frosty murmured, crushing her hair against his lips. “You did great. I’m proud of you. Hush, now.”
Maz picked up the bench. “Grab me a coat, would you, Frostman?” The pair ran out without coats or gloves. It wasn’t particularly warm indoors, either, so their layers were substantial. “Panic, I’ll help you set this right.”
“No blacks,” Frosty returned. “No colors. Just white.”
“Yeah, you said that.” Maz squatted to pick up the Coleman stove and look it over. “I’ll listen when you calm down. This isn’t you.”
“Bullshit,” Frosty countered. “I have never admired black culture. Or Latino, or Caribbean, or Hindu or Middle East or any of the rest. Neither have you. They’ll all have their own gangs, Maz, you’ll see. This one is ours. Our culture.”
Ava belatedly noticed that an audience had coalesced outside, come to see what all the fuss was about. She glowered at them and wiped her running nose and eyes on her thin knit gloves. “Gawkers, Frosty.”
He turned to glare at them. “Get inside! Show’s over!” He kissed her head and squeezed her, before letting her go. “You alright?”
“I’ve got her, Frosty,” Maz assured him. “Somebody grab me a coat. Gloves.”
Ava scampered in and found him one. The mitts in the pockets were ridiculously bulky for doing anything mechanical, but close enough. Frosty touched her cheek as they passed, and returned to the dojo.
While Maz pulled on the coat, she knelt to her stove and brushed away the street grime and kitty litter. The long thing to the burner was knocked askew.
“Allow me.” Maz gently nudged her out of the way. With deft fingers he straightened the long thing – he called it a generator – and checked over the parts. She told him she’d used rubbing alcohol because she couldn’t find Coleman fuel, whatever that was. He nodded. “Good job, Panic.”
“You’ve done this before.”
“Yeah. So has Frosty. My dad cooks with one of these all the time. We stay with Dad in July, at his camp in New Hampshire. Off-grid. Rustic, but we like it. There. Got a light?”
“I brought it out here in case it explodes.” Ava handed him wooden matches.
He grinned at her. “It won’t explode. Promise.” His first match was a wind casualty, so they shifted around. The second match did the trick. He tried to show her how to adjust the flame, but then changed his mind. “Let’s take it inside. Office, I think.” He hunkered back. “Panic… What happened to the two of you. You’re angry, and I can’t blame you. But this Nazi whites-only thing. That’s not Cade.”
Ava considered how many times she’d heard Frosty and Maz casually complain about immigrants. Half the city was foreign-born. She left behind her own Serbian passport in Greenwich Village for fear of Frosty finding out she was an immigrant. As for white supremacists, well, she was taught to appreciate diversity in school. Her personal pet peeve was her Chinese classmates at Brooklyn Tech. But Serbian Christians like her parents took a dim view of Jews and Muslims, a grudge nurtured through waves of rape, pillage, and genocide. Deda cheerfully trash-talked pretty much everyone who wasn’t white, and half the people who were. He especially loathed Russians, born of bitter personal experience.
“Are you sure about that, Maz? You two seem pretty racist to me. Maybe I am, too.”
“Cade?” Maz shook his head vehemently. “No way. Yes, I’m sure. There is no way in hell Cade Snowdon would be a racist or anti-Semite.”
“Well, maybe soon this will all be over, and we’ll go back to being Ava and Cade. But today we’re Panic and Frosty.”
“I’m not sure there’s any way back, Ava. Not if you cross that line. Never mind. Go find a pot with a lid. Meet me in the office.”
“I’m finally allowed in now, huh?” Frosty squeezed into the intimate office, Panic under his arm.
Jake and Kat were already there, with Maz managing the Coleman stove. “I hope this isn’t an intervention.”
Panic punched him lightly in the side. “It’s your birthday gift. A week early. Sorry. But hot water, ta da!”
He shut the door, closed his eyes, and breathed deep of the humid air.
Panic rummaged in her coat pocket. “I saved this for you. Maz, first mug is for Frosty.” She handed over a pink foil packet of hot cocoa mix. As Maz poured it into a mug, Frosty could see that miniature dehydrated marshmallows were included.
“Is there some for everyone?” Frosty murmured. He didn’t like it when treats weren’t shared with everyone present. He was also concerned about that concentrated shot of sugar, with caffeine in the chocolate. Hypoglycemic, he was supposed to avoid sweets except with protein. Not that he cared much. Among the recent challenges to his health, sugar ranked low. His girlfriend shook her head, and he squeezed her hand. “That’s OK, I’ll share.”
“No, it’s for you! I should have saved it for your birthday to drink alone.”
“You did great, baby.” Awesome, a mug of hot sugar it was. Jake evacuated the hard visitor chair for him. Frosty sank to it, pulling Panic onto his lap. And Maz handed him a cup of heaven, hazelnut-scented cocoa. He ignored Panic’s stated wishes and made her sniff it with him, and lace her fingers around the cup, too. He took the first appreciative sip, but made her take the second. One more round of that and he passed the cup to Kat. Panic frowned, but didn’t argue.
Maz reserved a mug of plain water for her, then brewed coffee for the rest of them. No one ever gleaned Sensei’s coffee service from Frosty’s private office. Panic elected a soothing herb tea.
Then Maz opened the intervention. “So Frosty is thinking of making the gang white-only. Because we kicked out some black turds today. They said wrong things to Panic. My thoughts. This isn’t who we are. Father Tanis would be unhappy. And Sensei.” He pointed to a framed certificate Sensei kept behind his desk, some Shaolin kempo teaching credential. “They’re not with us today. Except they are.”