Empire City

by Matt Gallagher

  There was one problem, though. The Sheepdogs were ragtag themselves, and being even loosely affiliated with fringe ultra politics made zero sense for a new party with centrist ideals and ambitions. Mia and some of the junior staff had pushed back on the proposal. The general heard their concerns, she said, but still, they’d be going forward with the Sheepdogs. There was just no getting around the money it’d save.

  “No one’s going to care who’s providing security.”

  Mia wasn’t so sure about that and had said so in the meeting. But rather than repeat herself she said, “They’ll need background checks. And look the part. Shaved, in suits. Polished shoes.”

  “Of course, Ms. Tucker. No scrubs in the ranks.” Tran rubbed at his chin. His fingers were long and sleek, like darts, his face a map of wrinkles and sunspots. A career in the infantry that could be traced from mark to mark, each one a distinct story and trial. Just as effective as reading a soldier’s ribbons from their uniform while twice as true.

  “They consider themselves devotees to the Bill of Rights,” Tran continued. “That’s all. I’m sure you had soldiers like them. Even the Legion had some. And we weren’t citizens yet.”

  “I did.” Mia filled her voice with false cheer. “Why do you think I’m worried?”

  “Spill blood for America,” Tran said, wistfully. The International Legion’s motto.

  His lips eased out into a smile. He did have a sense of humor, albeit a very dry one. He’d shared his journey once, at a staff gathering over drinks. How a reticent boy from Saigon had grown up to lead a Legionnaire battalion in combat. How a son of a bar girl raised by his grandparents now owned a house in the suburbs. Two floors, in a cul-de-sac. How America, for all her failures, for all her hypocrisies, had made such a life possible. How it was his duty now to pay it forward.

  He almost never talked it, he almost never revealed it. But Roger Tran was a believer.

  “They’ll do their job well,” Tran said. He meant the Sheepdogs. “Make the general feel safe. And feeling safe is an essential part of being secure.”

  That’s my line, Mia thought. From the general’s planned foreign policy speech on bringing home the warfighters, slowly, methodically. Not end the wars, exactly, but give public responsibility for them to host nations, which really meant more contracts for the privateer military companies and more operational freedom for the Legion. It was a decades-old idea pulled from the President Robb era. Who would accuse General Collins of being a peacemonger? Not even the young hawks caucus would dare.

  “Your partner. The Bureau man.” Tran pointed to a framed photograph on Mia’s desk. It was from their trip to Hawaii, her looking straight at the camera, Jesse mid-laugh, leis around their necks, a tide of silver battleships in a quiet teal cove behind them. She missed what the humidity did to Jesse’s hair when he let it grow. “He knows about compromising for the greater good. We could all learn from him.”

  “You don’t need to worry, Roger. I don’t agree but that’s fine.” What did he want from her? She noticed he kept looking at her from the sides of his eyes, like he was trying to find the right light. General Collins sometimes visited here, to talk. Maybe that bothered him. “I’m sure there’s plenty of moments like this in politics. On to the next one.”

  “Indeed.” Tran swiped away a loose wisp of hair from his forehead, quick and clean. “You’ll get that next one, too, if I had to bet.”

  He seemed in a decent-enough mood. Mia decided to take advantage of it. “There’s a rumor going around the office.”

  “Joy upon joys.”

  “About the report on the war spreading through Africa. That it leaked to Empire News from the War Department. From an angry American Service supporter there.”

  “And?” Roger Tran arched an eyebrow, conveying either amusement or disappointment. She couldn’t tell.

  “Is it true? The timing seems ideal.”

  “You actually want to know?”

  “I do.”

  “Okay. Yes. It is.”

  That pleased Mia. It meant she was working for professionals. It meant working in a midtown closet surrounded by Santas and strange men in rags would be temporary.

  Tran turned back at the doorway, clearing his throat. “Almost forgot,” he said. “The press release. For the drug companies.”

  “My fault. They got it to me this morning. I’ll look it over and have it to you within the hour.”

  “No need.” Tran tapped at the door frame once, twice. “We’re going to reevaluate our position.”

  “Huh?” This was why he’d come to her office, Mia now knew, but that still didn’t explain the policy shift. “This is a slam dunk. Retired general calls for closer scrutiny of treatments for troubled veterans. It’s easy. Straightforward.”

  “New poll.” Tran’s voice became even more neutral, removed entirely from the words it carried. “Twenty-nine percent of voters believe it’s a major national issue. Sixty percent do not.”

  Mia clung to the silence to keep from saying anything.

  “Democracy in action, Ms. Tucker. We’re moderates. Important to stick with the center.”

  “This…” Mia closed her eyes and sighed. This was why they’d dropped broader colony reform, too. “It matters, Roger. Beyond the politics of the moment. It’s a chance for us to lead. Show we’re different.”

  “Yes.” Tran formed his hand into a finger gun. He moved it down along his cheek, then held it in front of his lips. He blew air on it. “There’ll be others.” He left open the door behind him.

  * * *

  Mia’s phone rumbled again. It was a text from Britt Swenson. “need to c u. Free for dinner?”

  It was Thursday, and Jesse had the late shift, again. He’d taken it so they could go to a Saturday jazz festival along the seaport. She was looking forward to it, and he said he was, too. She almost believed him.

  Mia felt a headache coming on, the kind a couple of pain relievers wouldn’t quite dispel. She needed a quiet night at home, she knew, but she wanted noodles, and to talk about something inane and faraway, something that had nothing to do with polls, or voters, or Sheepdogs. And while she didn’t like thinking about it, sound sleep had proven tricky since the ballroom.

  An occasional nightmare, maybe not all that occasional: She’s in a hospital delivery bed, alone. No Jesse, no doctor, no nurse. No one else is there. She’s alone and all the desperate pleas in the world for otherwise don’t change that. Mia begins to scream, not so much feeling the baby coming as she senses it, and then it’s there, free and clear from the space between her legs. It’s not the pristine baby girl that Jesse seeks, though. It’s not even a child. Her baby’s born dead as the young Mayday veteran, the chandelier admirer whom the loose bullets came for with mad, raw chance in the ballroom, whose eyes slipped up to Mia in his final moments, howling for clean hope, or dirty understanding, or maybe eternity. She didn’t know because she’d flown away. To save herself. To save her unborn. In the dream, the born-dead man raises a hand to his throat to quell spurting blood, looking upon his new mother. He tries to speak. A high whistling sound like an incoming mortar comes out instead.

  That Mia always jolted awake then was of small comfort.

  In the confines of her office, Mia texted back the other woman. “Sure. Noodles?”

  Britt suggested a place in the Village. She couldn’t make it until 10 p.m., though. Was that too late? Mia tended to be on the couch at that hour, or at her dresser, picking out clothes for the following day. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been out that late on a weekday.

  “Perfect,” Mia texted. “See u then/there.”

  * * *

  Mia worked late, moving through her to-do list with automation. The Babylon rally got confirmed. The Service-for-All speech was red-penned. She tracked down the names and contact info of three local (and untroubled) veterans who might fit for a campaign ad. She connected with the McNamara Institute in Federal City about a potential contribution. They
had billionaire money behind them, and loved the idea of American Service. They loved the idea of Senator Collins even more.

  Was she disillusioned with her new job? Sure. But so what. Part of the messy business of democracy. Silent, arcane Roger Tran had a point there. Besides, she knew how to work while disillusioned. She’d been an American military officer in the Mediterranean Wars. Embrace the Suck.

  Mia took the downtown subway to Kissinger Square, walking up the stairs behind a group of Empire State students who looked far younger than she recalled being in college. Something began twinging inside her again. Life was speeding up. The night was pale as an egg and smelled like aloe. Fall just wouldn’t come. The north end of the square was dominated by the arch, tall and tusked, a drab outline against a chrome sky. The arch itself was seamed in historic bullet holes and fresh graffiti. Mia saw death skulls and antifascist arrows and extremist messages like “Freedom Beast” and counter-extremist messages like “Defy.”

  Not for the first time, Mia longed for the America of her childhood. Things hadn’t always been like this. She thought it important to remember that.

  Mia cut through the square both to save time and to people-watch. A small crowd had massed around the central fountain. Mia approached, honing her ears to the strident chants coming from its core.

  “Our veterans are under attack! What do we do? Stand up, fight back!”

  “From the Isles of Greece to the Near East, we demand justice, we demand peace!”

  “Save our warfighters! Mayday! Mayday!”

  It was an anti-colony demonstration. Parents, professors, even a few students stood with arms linked, chanting, singing, calling to passersby to join them. They were only a couple dozen, easily outnumbered by the observers, but the energy felt crisp, even potent. They wore suit jackets, blouses, collared plaid. A television crew filmed a couple of the older demonstrators showing a student how to draw a dove with chalk. Two large American flags billowed behind the group, enclosing the scene for the cameras in frame.

  Mayday. That’s what they were chanting. That’s what their cardboard signs said. Mia considered the word and its possible meanings. Not the Mayday Front. Just Mayday. Nor did the protestors look anything like the militants from the ballroom. But still. Mayday.

  “Fuck the president! Fuck the Council of Victors!” someone yelled. “Free our brothers, free our sisters, burn the colonies to the ground!”

  The crowd cheered.

  Mia had trouble determining what she felt exactly as she watched the protestors chant, and sing, and laugh, and rage. She believed the colonies needed changes, meaningful ones. They needed more oversight and transparency. It pained her to think that some veterans with troubles weren’t receiving the care promised to them. It seemed beyond decency that the medical treatments being conducted in the colonies weren’t always first-class. The media reports about “experiments” seemed exaggerated but she wasn’t a fool. There was probably something there, a few cases of overzealousness. She’d fought for the campaign to pursue this issue because it mattered to her. Mia believed in incremental reform.

  She did not believe the colonies should be burned to the ground.

  Squint hard enough and you could pretend this mob was participatory democracy, she thought. Like what her mother had devoted herself to with the peacemonger protests. They’d been arrested and sent to jail, sent to camps. That was real. And it had worked, in a way: the government ended the draft. The military won in Vietnam.

  In contrast, Mia found the protest in Kissinger Square a farce, absurd in concept and execution. Didn’t these people have something better to do? she thought. If they cared about the foreign wars, if they cared about the use of American military force, if they truly cared about veterans with troubles and the colonies, they’d had decades to express themselves, to push back. To “defy.” But there hadn’t been a whiff of any of that in America for years. Yet now, here, was a blanched imitation.

  Why?

  And to align themselves with domestic terrorists. Mayday—how dare they, Mia thought. Grow up. She felt proud that she was seeking to effect change the right way.

  Mia looked for the dean from Riverbrook. He wasn’t there. “Just something I did forty years ago,” he’d said about his days as a protestor. Only now, a month later, did she hear his understatement.

  This is why there’s a warfighting class, Mia thought. General Collins’s three percent. To keep this—what this was felt slippery to Mia, in her anger—removed from actual decision making. The purpose of the military was to maintain the American Way of Life. That superseded all. Volunteers or conscripts, that was the truth of the past. That was the truth of the present. That would be the truth of the future, too. Mia hadn’t known that when she joined, but she knew it now, knew it as intimately as the shiny naked knob at the bottom of her stump.

  And had I known? she thought in the square, the chants of protest nipping her ears. If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn’t change a thing.

  * * *

  The restaurant was tucked away on a side street off the square, across from a gray-brick hotel Hemingway had stayed in on his way to France. It was filled with steam from an open kitchen and half-full, mostly students loitering over closed books and drinks. Britt was already seated at a corner table and greeted Mia with a big smile and hug. Above the bar a television blared with the day’s news. Mia looked only to make sure the protest in Kissinger Square wasn’t on it.

  “You seem… happy?” Mia said. “And tan. Very tan.”

  Britt rolled her eyes, but remained smiling. “Jamaica,” she said. “We snuck away last weekend. On the down-low. Grady could get in trouble with the War Department.”

  “So.” Mia smiled, despite herself. Her friend was in love. “Things going well?”

  They were. Britt told her about Kingston, and the beaches, and how Grady Flowers was nothing like she’d expected him to be. He was kind, and generous, and funny, and was interesting, and said interesting things, was interested in what she had to say. There was the sex, too, of course. He wasn’t a musician. He had shoulders.

  She’d never thought she’d ever date a soldier. Jocks with guns, she said. Gross. But here they were.

  Mia wanted to ask what came next—what happened when the Volunteers deployed again? But she didn’t. Let them have this, she thought. Sometimes it’s more special when you know it’s going to end.

  “My brother’s not happy about it.” Britt shrugged. “Who cares what he thinks, though. How’s all that?” She pointed to Mia’s stomach.

  Outside a little back pain, Mia said, she was okay. That was mostly true. The waitress came. Mia ordered a sliced beef and broccoli entrée, Britt, the pork dumplings. She also tried to get Mia to split a bottle of wine with her.

  “Some doctors, like, recommend it.” Britt shrugged. “Don’t worry, I’ll drink most of it.”

  Mia abstained, unsure if the other woman was kidding. Britt asked about the campaign, whether it was for real or just more politics. “Both,” Mia told her, which was odd to say out loud, because she’d barely admitted it to herself.

  “That’s why I texted you, actually.” Britt scrunched her face, slight sun streaks from Jamaica overlapping. Mia heard and recognized the slight tonal change. She was about to be asked a favor. “Thought maybe you could help.”

  Britt had a friend, a bouncer who worked freelance security for various Gypsy Town music venues. He was a good guy, Britt explained. Nicest three-hundred-pound man she’d ever known. After years of just getting by, he’d found good, steady work with a big security firm. It came with a 401(k) and everything.

  “The firm who worked the American Service inaugural?” Mia knew where this was going. Britt looked surprised. “Lucky guess.”

  It had been that firm, in fact. They’d fired everyone who’d worked the inaugural because of what happened, to include Britt Swenson’s bouncer friend. And it wasn’t his fault, she said. Did Mia—could she maybe ask around, explain the situat
ion, help get this guy a second chance?

  Mia sighed, trying not to show any irritation. “We’re not working with the firm ourselves anymore, so I doubt they’d care what we have to say.” Britt meant well, she thought, but didn’t always think things through. “We just decided on their replacements. Sorry.”

  “Oh.” Britt took a long sip of wine and hummed her lips. “That’s too bad. It really wasn’t his fault. One of your campaign people let in those Mayday freaks.”

  Mia tilted her head. “Did your friend say that?”

  He had. He’d told Britt that he’d been standing near the back entrance when the veterans dressed as Home Guard rolled up through the kitchen. Their credentials checked out but his supervisor had seemed perturbed by something. They’d begun a deeper verification when a campaign staffer intervened, saying he’d vouch for the Home Guard.

  Mia was going to let it go—twisted gossip, almost certainly, from someone with a grudge—but the old army officer in her wanted confirmation. She asked Britt to clarify with her friend.

  “I’ll text him.” He responded within the minute. “Older dude in a tuxedo, he says. Had a bunch of military medals on his lapel. Didn’t get his name. But he acted important? I don’t know.”

  And the supervisor? One of the people killed in the gunfire. “It’s a sad thing. He had kids.”

  There’d been plenty of important older men in tuxedos with military medals in the ballroom that evening, Mia remembered. And this information, if she could call it that, was at best roundabout. Still, though. Something felt off. It seemed too weird to dismiss outright. Her leg that wasn’t there began to ache with phantom pain.

  The waitress came with their meals. Mia tried to hold off a yawn. It’d been a long day; coming out tonight was a mistake, she thought. Four bites in to her sliced beef and broccoli her phone started buzzing from her purse. “Jesus, Linda,” she said out loud. She explained for Britt. “My stepmom. She won’t leave it alone. I don’t want to talk about being pregnant with her. I wish she’d just get that.”