by Joan Brady
She dialled the number, but all she got was an answering machine. ‘You have reached Dr Gonzaga. You may leave a message if you wish, but I’m afraid you’ll have to wait your turn for an answer.’
Irritating woman. She had those blonde highlights in her hair too. Becky didn’t approve of women dying their hair. Except discreetly of course, as she did herself. She called Donna. Donna was in the English department, nothing to do with the sciences, but she’d volunteered to show the Englishwoman around; Donna was proud of Springfield, and she knew it well.
‘Aloysia?’ Donna said. ‘Word is, she’s gone off somewhere with her new lover.’
‘Fiddlesticks. She’s teaching this summer at the community college. I arranged it myself. What’s her cell phone number?’
‘Afraid she doesn’t have a cell, Becky dear. She talks about English eccentricity a lot. She did tell the college she might not make the first week or so.’
‘She didn’t tell me that. Email?’
‘Never answers it. I’d forget her, Becky darling.’
Donna herself became the first draftee into the protest.
She’d warned Jimmy against running for mayor in the first place. She knew him too well. The temptations were going to be more than he could withstand. Not long before Hugh Freyl died, he’d nearly got himself into trouble forging signatures on Powers of Attorney to make payments into somebody else’s political fund. That could have been serious. He’d have lost his licence to practise law; he could even have ended up in prison. He’d come to Donna in a panic; she’d advised him to do nothing, and in the end nothing had come of it. She’d given Becky only the vaguest sense of what had happened for the simple reason that the signature Jimmy had forged was Hugh’s.
And the last time he’d forged it, Hugh was dead.
Donna objected to the idea of admitting men to the protest, but the moment Becky hung up, she thought, ‘Well, why not men?’ They’d been excluded at the beginning because they wouldn’t have been interested anyway. In half a century, that had changed; culture wasn’t sissy stuff any more. Besides, this was politics, not culture, and men had their uses. For example, the journalist Becky could be surest of was a man called Chuck Finch: little courage but easily pushed where she wanted him to go. A male professor of something might be helpful too. Aloysia was a professor. So were several Springfield Arts Society members. But Becky was a hard-line realist: a woman professor didn’t carry the weight a man did, no matter how many feminists pretended otherwise. There was the added attraction that a stray male or two would camouflage David.
The thought of new faces brought to mind another woman. This one had come to the door campaigning for Protect Marriage Illinois; Becky had too little interest in sex to see why anybody would campaign against gay marriages, but she sensed intelligence, tenacity, imagination in Kate Bagalayos. The trouble was, the woman was Filipino. Becky disapproved of Filipinos even more than she disapproved of the English. As a people, they’d allowed dictators to rob them blind: clearly a national weakness of spirit. But individuals occasionally buck a trend, and she sensed that Kate Bagalayos was one of them.
Such a pity that the woman lived on the east side of town, where Lillian lived. Nobody in the Springfield Arts Society lived there.
10
SPRINGFIELD: Ten days later, the last Thursday in June
Becky banged the gavel she’d bought well over half a century ago for her first Springfield Arts Society meeting.
‘Ladies! Gentlemen!’ she called out. ‘I think we should begin.’
The electronic controls of her wheelchair allowed her to raise herself so that hers was the highest head around Donna’s dinner table; it was an impressive dinner table, a single diagonal slice out of the heart of a very old ash. Donna’s university salary wasn’t too impressive, and so far her writing had come to nothing beyond a hefty manuscript that got heftier every year; without Jimmy’s input, she couldn’t get the final chapters to gel no matter how much work she put in. But he’d helped her through her divorce from the broker; the settlement had been very generous, and as part of it she’d kept this house in one of Springfield’s most exclusive areas. Becky had advised on the refurbishment, which included this table and an antique Aubusson carpet all the way from Paris. The view from Donna’s dining-room windows wasn’t up to such competition. It should have been full of flowers, but the rain of the wedding reception had stopped as abruptly as it had started. After that, the ground had baked in a renewed heatwave. Even well-tended gardens like Donna’s were as wilted as spinach in a frying pan.
Donna sat next to Becky at the head of the table, pen poised to take minutes. At the opposite end, David slouched beside Helen, one elbow propped up on the ash surface, the rest of him stretched away from it in a bored contempt that was a palpable force in the room. Becky had expected precisely this insolence and worried about how she’d handle it. She hadn’t anticipated the effect though. In a few minutes, he’d united the dozen others so strongly against him that she knew she’d get wholehearted support for anything she wanted. The trouble was, she didn’t know what that might be.
‘As you know,’ she said to them, ‘our mayor plans to sell our water out from under us, and we have to find a way to stop him. I’m depending on you to have lots of ideas. First though, I want to introduce you to Kate Bagalayos. She’s the only person here who has some hands-on experience with protest movements.’
Kate was mid-thirties, unfazed at finding herself among the elite of Springfield, black hair piled on her head in braids, a bright, quick face too wide to be pretty, skin a dark tan colour.
‘Gosh, it’s good of you to come,’ Donna said, her frenetic enthusiasm widening her eyes so that white showed all around the iris. ‘I mean, what are we going to do? Jimmy means no harm, but I know him. He loves money and meddling in things and he gets overenthusiastic. I’m afraid he’s’ – she glanced around at the others – ‘well, I’m afraid he’s trying to pull a fast one.’
She and Becky had discussed all this in detail. Donna hadn’t told Becky about Jimmy’s probing into an old woman’s fears. She’d known exactly what he was looking for, not that he’d made any attempt to hide it from her: insinuate himself into Becky’s mind, plant doubts and uncertainties that didn’t exist, shake her confidence so he could manipulate her into backing him – or at least not opposing him. But Becky’s circle of friends had become Donna’s circle; they were the people who’d comforted her when Jimmy fell in love with Helen. Loyalty wasn’t a concept Jimmy knew much about; Donna did, and his desertion of her still burned. She’d lost the man who’d become her muse and her contributing editor as well as the only man she’d ever loved; she was almost as eager as Becky herself to see him fall on his face.
But she kept losing hold of where Kate fit into the picture. ‘I can’t remember what Becky said you were—’
‘Oh, God, Donna,’ Helen interrupted with a laugh, ‘she’s the one who wants to ban gay marriages.’
Kate turned to Helen and nodded. ‘That’s me. You’re Helen, right? Just got married yourself, didn’t you?’
‘You really care who goes to bed with what?’
‘From the looks of your choice’ – Kate leaned forward and scanned David – ‘I don’t think a single soul in the Protect Marriage Illinois campaign would object, certainly not me.’
‘That doesn’t answer my question.’
‘I’m Catholic.’
‘So?’
Kate gave her a wry smile. ‘You haven’t met Father Antonioni.’
Except for Kate, all these people had been at Helen and David’s wedding party; they were rich people with maids and Ferraris. Sitting around a table with a Filipino from the east side was distinctly unsettling. A chunky surgeon with hands that belonged on a stevedore dismissed her with a frown.
‘I’m not really clear why we shouldn’t allow a few changes at Springfield Light and Power,’ he said. ‘My water bill is sky high.’
‘I resent having t
o pay for water at all,’ said the woman sitting next to her, tall and thin, curator of the Rebecca Freyl Museum of Art. ‘When I think how cheap it was when I first arrived here . ’ She trailed off with an irritated shrug.
‘Oh, yes. I do understand.’ Becky was at her most sympathetic. ‘And I know Jimmy has told you privatization will improve all that. I find it interesting that he can say it to you with a straight face.’ As soon as Helen had suggested slapping him down, Becky had begun intensive research. She began by telling them that much to her own surprise, she’d discovered prices soared whenever private companies took over. Infrastructure crumbled. Services deteriorated.
‘Our water is ours!’ Donna interrupted her mid-flow, unable to wait for the contribution she and Becky had decided she would make. ‘That’s the point. What right has he got to sell it out from under us?’
Several of the others – the very people who’d urged Jimmy on around the buffet table at Becky’s – started talking all at once, a babble that quickly took on a righteous and angry edge.
‘. a democratic society . ’
‘. rights of the citizen . ’
‘. the constitution forbids . ’
David shifted impatiently. Becky gave him a withering glance and banged her gavel.
‘You okay?’ Helen whispered to him.
He gave an exasperated sigh.
‘Stick it out five more minutes. Just think how happy they’ll be to see us go.’
He shifted impatiently again.
‘The question is,’ Becky was saying, ‘how do we make ourselves heard?’
‘How about a rally?’ said the doctor. ‘We could shout slogans and march with placards. Or maybe hold one of those sleep-outs.’
‘Why not a letter-writing campaign?’ the curator said.
There were nods and murmurs of excited assent around the room.
‘Yeah. Sure. That would work,’ Donna said. ‘We could write to Senators, Representatives. You know. They’ve got to listen to—’
David’s snort of contempt silenced the table.
‘You want something,’ he said, ‘you take it.’
Helen and David left then, and the moment they were out of the room, a clamour broke out, anger at Jimmy abruptly morphing into anger at David.
Becky let them ramble on, her crepe cheeks growing pinker and her lips tighter. It was intolerable, absolutely intolerable. She’d never agreed with David Marion before – not on any subject – and she had no intention of letting anybody see that she agreed with him now. But she’d realized the moment he said it that unless they took their water away from Jimmy, she had no chance of showing an ungrateful mayor who was boss in this town.
She banged her gavel. ‘I think what we’re all saying is that we need to act in a political fashion.’ She was fairly sure this phrasing didn’t reveal David as the source of the idea. ‘After all, we’re dealing with a politician, and what he proposes is a political act as well as a social injustice. We’ll have to force him somehow. Kate, you’re the only one with experience, and you haven’t said a word. What do you think?’
Kate put her elbows on the table. ‘Depends on what you really want.’
‘We want control over our water,’ Becky said.
‘If he’s determined, it can turn into quite a fight.’
‘How do we start?’
‘You’re going to have to change the law. As it stands, Mayor Zemanski has the right and the power to sell any publicly owned utility if he wants to without paying the slightest attention to anybody.’
Kate explained that Springfield had what was called a Strong Mayor System. Most American cities did. Mayors like Jimmy had almost total administrative control as well as the executive independence to do exactly what he was doing. Many American mayors had already sold off their public utilities. There’d been a few protests, notably in Stockton, California, where the residents had resisted takeover by the multinational Thames Water, once a glory of British enterprise, now a subsidiary of the German giant RWA – and as close to its continental origins as that only because the Qatari government wasn’t quite quick enough on its feet in attempting a takeover.
Most other American cities had given in quietly to whatever company bid highest; in many cases, the local people hadn’t even known what was happening until it was way too late.
‘You have to get something on the ballot to cap his powers as mayor,’ Kate went on. ‘That’s what they did in Stockton. And to do it, you’re going to have to do what they did: persuade thousands of registered voters to sign a petition.’
‘You think it could it work here?’ Becky asked. ‘In Springfield?’
Kate considered a moment. ‘He’s not really popular, Mrs Freyl. Lots of people voted for him only because you backed him. And protest did work in Stockton. It took years. But it worked. Not only that, it forced Thames Water into the arms of the Germans.’
Becky smiled. ‘So you propose a frontal attack, do you?’
‘Everything else is talk.’
11
KNOX COUNTY, ILLINOIS: The same day
Little Andy rocked back and forth on his cement bunk, curled on his side like a baby in the womb. Sitting was too painful. ‘Positive?’ he said.
‘I’m afraid so, Andrew,’ Quack said.
Little Andy glanced up at him, pulled himself into a tighter foetal position, rocked some more. Tears rolled down his cheeks. ‘I want to go home.’
‘I know.’
Quack sat with Little Andy in the cell Andy now shared with a toothless old man called Casper. Cement walls. Cement bunks. Rusting metal toilet. Rusting metal washbasin. High, barred window. Humidity at least ninety-five per cent. Heat just as unrelenting. There was no breeze; both their faces shone with sweat.
Hardly the Hilton, but a far better place than the cell Andy had shared with Hot Cheese, who’d claimed him for a fuck toy. A prison is a thriving complex of businesses and barter. Hot Cheese ran prostitution in South Hams, and Andy had arrived with a face made for pleasure: arched brows, big eyes and a soft mouth that dimpled into his cheeks. All this teetered on the edge of ruin now and turned him from a pretty young man into an achingly beautiful one. As one of the Everleigh sisters of the famous Chicago whorehouse said it’s why she went into the trade: ‘I realized I was sitting on a fortune.’ That’s what Hot Cheese saw in Andy, who’d remained his favourite for a full four months. Hot Cheese liked it even rougher than the Shark had liked it with Quack, and he liked watching his clients approach it the same way. Sometimes they didn’t bother with Vaseline. If anybody had an interesting implement or an unexpected technique, he was eager to see it tried out.
It was going to take Andy’s anus a long time to recover. The miracle was that he wasn’t dead; such treatment can cause internal ruptures and wild infections. As for the psychological scars, Quack could only hope the boy was more resilient than he’d been himself.
Rescuing Andy from Hot Cheese was a rare intervention. Quack stayed clear of whatever prison businesses he could, treated the fallout, kept to the infirmary. He was a revered figure in the cell blocks; the gang bosses needed him, and they knew it. They respected his judgement, his discretion, his expertise and that’s to say nothing of his ability to acquire obscure ingredients for the prison’s drug trade. Their soldiers got well quickly when they went to him. So did they themselves, and because he kept as respectful a distance from prison commerce as he could, they usually gave him what he wanted when he asked for it.
Quack began Andy’s rescue with a formal application to see Wolfie, the General of David’s old gang, the Insiders. Wolfie had strong ties with Chicago organized crime, which made him a celebrity as well as the most powerful boss in prison. Inmates vied to sit next to him in the mess hall. They bragged about what he’d said to them. An hour after Quack’s application, word came back that Wolfie would give him the rare privilege of a private interview in the yard. Dozens of inmates watched the meeting from a distance. The two men – Quack and Wolf
ie – walked together while Quack talked and Wolfie listened. Then Wolfie stopped, nodded, clapped Quack on the shoulder, nodded again.
The deal was done.
Everybody knew that the sicker Andy became, the more beautiful he became and that his price to clients brought in more profit than any of Hot Cheese’s other bitches. But everybody also knew that inmates who broke the terms of Wolfie’s deals ended up dead or castrated. Within an hour the details came through. Hot Cheese would sell Little Andy to Quack in exchange for a steady supply of freebase cocaine. A guard among Hot Cheese’s clients paid in cocaine hydrochloride, the active ingredient in freebase and crack. Crack is pretty easy to mix. Freebase isn’t; it takes ammonia and ethyl ether. Most of all, it takes nerve and a steady hand. Quack had the steadiest hands in the prison; he was also the only one who could be trusted to cook it up pure.
As soon as Quack and Hot Cheese had shaken hands on the deal, Wolfie arranged for Andy’s transfer to the cell with Casper.
‘HIV is a chronic illness, Andrew,’ Quack said to Andy. ‘It’s no longer a death sentence.’
Little Andy kept rocking.
‘We’ve caught it early,’ Quack went on. ‘That’s good. The viral load is low. That’s good too. Best of all, you’re not drug-resistant.’ Andy rocked. ‘Life expectancy is getting better all the time, and there are some really powerful treatments out there.’ Andy rocked. Quack studied him a moment. ‘One of the advantages of being the prison medic is that I can treat my own disease.’
Andy stopped rocking. ‘You too?’
Quack nodded.
‘How long?’
‘Nearly two decades.’
‘How come you’re still alive?’
‘I managed to diagnose myself shortly after AZT was licensed, and I’d read that combining two retrovirals gave a patient a far better chance.’