Strange Trades

by Paul Di Filippo

  “That’s what I thought you’d say. Just wanted to check.”

  Holly turned to go, paused, looked back.

  “You’ll be there?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  “Thought you’d say that too.”

  As an excuse for a party, the nova was always reason enough.

  Born of violence, the star was something new and shining and perfect. Temporary, certainly, but all life, all human accomplishments are temporary. Who’s to say whether it’s better to drudge along from day to day, hoarding one’s energy, or blow it all off in one spectacular display?

  I had almost not come to the party tonight. For a long time I had sat in my trailer, shirtless and in shorts, not thinking, precisely, but just waiting in suspension for something to move me one way or another. At last an inner balance tipped, disturbed by some wind that blew from the soul, and I got up and dressed.

  At the last minute, I buckled my utility belt around my waist. The shearing fork I had hung there several days ago, when I had helped Leotis and Shayla, slapped against my hip. I guess I wanted some badge of my status as comfort. Or were my motivations even then something darker.…?

  Leaving the ATV parked, I walked across the empty land between my trailer and the party, wanting to be alone for a little while longer.

  Someone in the Gold Crew had brought a boombox that pumped out crank-up hits on DAT, drum-heavy rhythms. There was a makeshift table consisting of planks on two plastic saw- horses, covered with some scavenged curtains as tablecloth. Various cardboard take-out cartons and trays held Chinese food, pizza, fried chicken. Somewhere the Bricks had dug up some styrofoam plates in their original packaging. I hadn’t seen styrofoam in years, since the Montreal Protocols got into full gear. To drink there was beer, wine, punch.

  I grabbed a bottle of beer and circulated among the dancers and talkers for a while, nodding a hello here and there, but not joining in any conversation.

  He stood back in the shadows, watching.

  “Mike.”

  “Sledge.”

  “Good to see you here, man. Hope it’s just the first time outa many.”

  “Maybe. You plan on standing alone here all night?”

  He laughed. “You got my number, buddy. I get too far above it sometimes. Comes with the job. But I don’t have to tell you that. No, I’m gonna party down right now. You too, you hear.”

  “I hear.”

  We stepped out and walked together, toward a crowd of laughing people.

  As we drew closer, I recognized a voice I hadn’t expected to hear tonight. Drucker’s. Simultaneously fascinated and repelled by the Bricks, he must have heard about the party and jumped at the chance to get close to them. He sounded a little high.

  Runt was speaking. “Yeah, after all our work, we really feel we got us a nice home now. Tons better than the streets.”

  Drucker laughed. “I wouldn’t get too used to it. Your transport orders were signed days ago.”

  In the human silence the music sounded harsh and alien.

  Everyone turned to Sledge and me.

  “Never did trust you bleedin’ hearts all that far,” Sledge said.

  Reflections snagged on the blade of his knife. I swore I could see the nova caught in its tip, embedded in his junk ring.

  “Put it away, brother, it’s too late for that now.”

  “Ain’t your brother. And too late depends on what you want.”

  He jabbed upward.

  This fight, I caught his right wrist with my left hand and squeezed.

  You do a lot of lifting on a construction site, even as straw boss.

  After a few seconds, he dropped the knife.

  “That’s cool, Mike, don’t need no blade to put you down.”

  His grip on my throat felt like a compliant’s. I knew he would shatter my larynx in a few more seconds.

  I fumbled for the fork at my waist, managed to unhook it.

  Clamped it against the wrist I still held.

  Pulled the trigger.

  Sledge staggered back. I dropped what I held. His face wore a look of incredulity.

  “So it all just comes down to better tools—” he said, then collapsed.

  I stepped away from the crowd flowing in on him. I saw Holly raise a walkie-talkie to her mouth to summon help. She always could keep calm. Like I said, she was the best I had. Then she dropped the box in the dust and rushed in with the others.

  I tried to speak, but only croaked. I massaged my throat and looked up.

  One-eyed Cassiopeia glared.

  Time is a whirlpool that can swallow whole societies, whole cities, whole cultures.…

  Or whole individuals.

  Where is the man now who was so certain of his plans, his convictions, his idealism, so certain that the good of the many balanced the destruction of a few? I look in the mirror, but can’t find him.

  With Sledge in the hospital, the Bricks lost their center, dispersed, dissolved into the random components they had been before Sledge forged them into a unit. Most opted for the relocation camps, and eventual settlement in the rebuilt Harlem. Others disappeared back onto the hungry streets.

  The project rolled on under my direction, a tamed juggernaut now done with its crushing. (I thought of leaving—especially under the constant silent accusation of Holly’s daily gaze—but realized that to abandon what had already caused so much grief and bloodshed, without seeing it to fruition, would be the ultimate folly.)

  But when the project was finished, when the first of the quarter-million people who would live there had begun to filter back, I quit the UCC. Mama Cass couldn’t understand. Holly could, but didn’t care.

  I went looking for Sledge—and Zora. I didn’t know what I wanted to say to them, but it never mattered. I couldn’t find them. It was as if the culture had swallowed them up. So instead, I went looking for others like Sledge. Them I found. They existed in every city, large and small. The forgotten scavengers, living ingeniously on castoffs and detritus, the waste and debris. And when I found them, these bricoleurs—

  I tried to atone.

  Here is the Dark Cousin to “Spondulix.” Again, a motley lot of underdogs try to better their lives with inspired lateral circumventions of the system. But in Rory Honeyman’s world, there is really no presence of evil, a lack which makes all the difference between the broad farce of his tale and the tragedy of Shenda Moore, the dog of love.

  As the prefacing quote indicates, I was trying to replicate, channel or borrow some of Phil Dick’s broad compassion for suffering, absurd humanity (with a dash of the Hernandez Brothers). I hope I did not dishonor his artistic or spiritual legacy.

  My knowledge of Santeria derives exclusively from Migene Gonzalez-Wippler’s Santeria: The Religion (Harmony Books, 1989), for which, my thanks.

  Katuna Inc.

  He learned about pain and death from an ugly dying dog. It had been run over and lay by the side of the road, its chest crushed, bloody foam bubbling from its mouth. When he bent over it the dog gazed at him with glasslike eyes that already saw into the next world.

  To understand what the dog was saying he put his hand on its stumpy tail. “Who mandated this death for you?” he asked the dog. “What have you done?”

  —Philip K. Dick, The Divine Invasion

  1.

  Memories of the 37th

  Maybe he should get himself a dog.

  A dog—a pet, a constant companion, something to fuss over—might help.

  But then again, maybe not. It was so hard to know, to make up his mind.

  Considering his unique situation. His special troubles. His extra share of suffering.

  Adding any unknown factor to the sad equation of his life might disguise its solution, remove any answer forever beyond his powers of philosophical computation. (Assuming his life—anyone’s life—was solvable at all.)

  But how could he know for sure without trying?

  Yet did he dare try?

&n
bsp; Foolish as the dilemma seemed, it was a real quandary, seemingly his alone.

  Others seemed not to have such problems.

  For instance. Everyone in Thurman Swan’s life had a dog, it seemed. All the people he hung with daily at the Karuna Koffeehouse. (He felt odd calling them “friends,” upon such short acquaintance, even though they were starting to feel a little like that.) Shenda, Buddy, Chug’em, SinSin, Verity, Odd Vibe.… They were all dog owners, every manjack and womanjill of them. Big dogs or little dogs, mutts or purebreds, quiet or yippy, reserved or exuberant, shaggy or groomed, their dogs came in all varieties. But one thing all the animals had in common, Thurman had noticed: they were inseparable from their masters and mistresses, loyal beyond questioning, and seemed to repay every attention lavished on them in some psychic coin.

  Call it love, for lack of a less amorphous word.

  Thurman could have used some of that.

  The cheap clock radio came on then, dumb alarm-timer, unaware of Thurman’s insomnia, activating itself needlessly. The device was the only item on his nightstand. There had been a framed picture of Kendra and Kyle, but when the letters and calls stopped coming, he had stored the picture of his ex-wife and child in his lone suitcase on the high closet shelf.

  Thurman had already been lying awake for hours, although he hadn’t had the energy to get out of bed. He didn’t sleep much these days. Not since the war.

  The war that had held so many mysteries in its short span, and changed so much—for him, if no one else.

  Furnace skies. Sand lacquered with blood. And greasy, roilsome black clouds.…

  He was in one of the ammo-packed, barrel-stacked bunkers that made up the conquered fortified maze at Kamisiyah, laying the charges that would bring the place down like a bamboo hut in a typhoon. He wore no protective gear, hadn’t thought he needed it. His superiors certainly hadn’t insisted on it. Dusty sunlight probed through wall-slits like Olympian fingers. Sweat leaked out from beneath his helmet liner. He took a swig from his plastic liter-bottle of water, then returned to work. His deft actions raised spectral echoes in the cavernous concrete room, ovenlike in its heat and feeling.

  But exactly what was it baking?

  So intent was Thurman on the delicate wiring job that he didn’t notice the entrance of visitors.

  “Specialist Swan.”

  Thurman jumped like a cricket.

  Major Riggins stood in the doorway. With him was a civilian.

  Civilians made everyone antsy, and Thurman was no exception. But there was something extra disturbing about this guy.

  As thin as a jail-cell bar and just as rigid, wearing an expensive continental-tailored suit so incongruous in this militarized desert setting, the guy radiated a cold reptilian menace. A stance and aura reminiscent of a fly-cocked iguana was reinforced by shaved head, pasty glabrous skin and bulging eyes.

  Major Riggins spoke. “As you can see, Mister Durchfreude, the demolition is calculated to leave absolutely nothing intact.”

  Durchfreude stepped into the room and began running a gnarly hand lovingly, as if with regret, over the piles of crated munitions. Thurman’s gaze followed the ugly manicured hand in fascination, as if fastened by an invisible string. For the first time, he noticed what appeared to be a trademark stamped on many of the crates and drums and pallets.

  It was a stencilled bug. A termite?

  The civilian returned to the doorway. “Excellent,” he dismissively hissed, then turned and walked off.

  Major Riggins had the grace to look embarrassed. “You can return to your work, Swan,” he said brusquely.

  Then his commander left, hurrying after the civilian like a whipped hound.

  Thurman went back about his task. But his concentration refused to return.

  And a day later, at 1405, March 4, 1991, when Thurman and his fellow members of the 37th Engineer Battalion assembled at a “safe” distance from the bunkers, video cameras in hand, the proper signals were sent, liberating a force that shook the earth for miles around and sending up a filthy toxic plume that eventually covered thousands of surrounding hectares, including, of course, their camp. Thurman, uneasily watching, thought to see the mysterious civilian’s face forming and dissolving in the oily black billows.

  A commercial issued from the bedside radio. “Drink Zingo! It’s cell-u-licious!”

  A drink would taste good. Not that Zingo crap, but a very milky cappuccino. More milk than coffee, in fact. With half a plain bagel. No schmear. Thurman’s stomach wasn’t up to much more.

  Now, if he could only get up.

  He got up.

  In the bathroom, Thurman hawked bloody sputum into the sink—pink oyster on porcelain—put prescription unguent on all his rashes, took two Extra-strength Tylenol for his omnipresent headache, counted his ribs, combed his hair and flushed the strands from the comb down the toilet. In the bedroom he dressed gingerly, in loose sweats and unlaced sneakers, so as to avoid stressing his aching joints. Halfheartedly, he neatened the sweaty bedcovers. No one would see them, after all.

  In the entry way of his small apartment, he scooped up pill vials and inhalers, pocketing them. Claiming his aluminum cane with the foam back-bolster clipped to it, he left his two semifurnished rooms behind.

  Another busy day of doing nothing awaited. Retiree city. Adult day care. Park bench idyll.

  Not the worst life for a sick old man.

  Too bad Thurman was only twenty-seven.

  2.

  Bullfinch’s Mythology

  “No!”

  Shenda Moore burst the shackles of her bad dream with an actual effort of will. There was nothing involuntary or accidental about her escape. No built-in handy mental trapdoor opened automatically, no cluster of ancient guardian neurons on the alert triggered its patented wake-up! subroutine. No, it was all Shenda’s own doing. The disengagement from the horrifying scenario, the refusal to participate in her subconscious’s fear-trip, the determination to leave the grasping fantasies of sleep behind for the larger consensual illusion called reality— It was all attributable to the force of Shenda’s character.

  Really, everyone who knew her would have said, so typical of the girl!

  Sometimes Shenda wished she were different. Not so driven, so in-charge, so capable. Sure, mostly she was grateful every minute of every day to Titi Yaya for bringing her up so. Shenda liked who she was.

  But being responsible for everything was really so much work! An endless roster of sweaty jobs: mopping up messes, straightening crooked lives, building and repairing, shoring up, tearing down, kissing all the boo-boos better. Mwah! And now: stop yer sobbin’.

  Dancing with the Tarbaby, Shenda called it.

  And there was no stopping allowed.

  Especially now—with Karuna, Inc., taking off and demanding so much of her time — Shenda awoke most mornings with a hierarchical tree of chores arrayed neatly in her head, a tree where any free time hung like forbidden fruit at the farthest unreachable branch tips.

  But even coming online to such a formidable task-array was better than waking like this.

  Shenda’s heart was still pounding like a conga, her shouted denial still bouncing around the bedroom walls. She clicked on a table lamp and swung her slim and muscular caramel legs out from under the sheets, sitting upright in her cotton Hanro nightshirt. She massaged each temple with two fingers for a while, lustrous and wavy black hair waterfalling around her lowered face, while contemplating the nightmare.

  It was not the first time she had had the nightmare.

  She was on a flat graveled rooftop in broad daylight, level with the upper stories of many surrounding buildings. Tin-walled elevator-shaft shack, a satellite dish, door to a stairwell, whirling vents, a couple of planters and deckchairs. Highly plausible, except that she had never been in such a place.

  With her was Bullfinch.

  In her hand, Shenda suddenly realized she clutched a tennis ball.

  Bullfinch capered around her, leaping
up for the Holy Grail of the ragged green ball, begging her to throw it.

  So she threw, sidearm, expert and strong. Wildly, without care or forethought.

  The ball sailed through the air, Bullfinch in hot pursuit, claws raking the gravel.

  Over the parapet the ball sailed.

  With a majestic leap, Bullfinch madly, blithely followed, sailing off into deadly space.

  In the dream, Shenda screamed her denial.

  Now she merely murmured, “No.…”

  The “meaning” of the dream was plain enough: her duties were getting to her, the weight of her responsibilities to those she loved was making her imagine she might easily fuck up.

  Hell, she knew she was gonna fuck up sooner or later. It was inevitable. Everyone fucked up continuously. That could almost be a definition of human existence. The 24-7 fuck-up. She didn’t need any dream to remind her of that.

  All she prayed was that she wouldn’t fuck up too bad. Be left with enough of her faculties to pick up the pieces and start again.

  Luck came into this somewhere.

  And luck was one of the things beyond her control.

  Her heart had calmed. Rising determinedly to her bare feet (the purple paint on her toenails was all chipped—she’d have to make time to see SinSin for a pedicure —not that she had, like, any man in her life these days to appreciate such details), Shenda went about getting ready for her day.

  Her first instinctive action after the nightfright was to check on Bullfinch.

  She found the dog snoring in the dining room.

  Disdaining his very expensive catalog-ordered puffy cushion bed, Bullfinch had made himself a nest.

  Somehow he had reached a corner of Titi Yaya’s antique linen cloth (remnant of old high times in Havana) where it hung down from the tabletop. He had dragged the cloth down, bringing two brass candlesticks with it. (God, she must have been dead to the world!) Then he had chewed the irreplaceable cloth to the shredded state most suitably evocative of some genetic memory of an African grass lair.

  “Oh, Bully! Whatever is Titi going to say!”