by Eric Mattys
Terese gulps. “Damn. Like you literally killed him or you, like, killed his memory or something?”
The Queen of the Universe rummages through her cart. “It does not mattah anymore. I paid my debt. Hey, you want to buy sometin’? I got all kin’a stuff in here.”
Terese squints and smiles. “Now, why would the Queen of the Universe need to sell anything?”
“I got love beads and love potions. Oh and I just found dese two plants dis mornin’.” She whispers, “I tink it’s weed. But I’ll sell it to you.”
“You don’t want the plants for yourself?”
“Lawrdy no! Da Queen of da Universe is drug-free. Dey try to make me take all kin’a drugs, but I just say no.”
“That’s good for you. I’m not a big pot smoker, but I have a friend who might put it to good use. How much?”
The Queen of the Universe smiles and blinks. “How much do ya have?”
28
Changing the Channel
Max freshens up a bit by throwing on some cologne, refusing to wear deodorant because of all the chemicals. Mew occupies the shower in the name of removing his excess sweat. Max replaces his shirt with a fresh button-up and attaches his prosthetic arm. He has two. One is flesh toned for looks. The other has a metallic hook, which is mildly functional. He wears the one for looks. He grabs his extra large suitcase full of prosthetics and walks to the bus stop. Time for transformation. Max rolls down the sleeves of his shirt. It’s a perfect way to disguise emptiness, to live and breathe as a commercial convincing anyone who listens that products can fill their void, too. When the bus comes, he steps on, flashes his bus pass, and sits.
“How’s it going, friend?” He smiles big and offers a handshake with his prosthetic arm to the man next to him.
The man looks at the fleshy latex hand and asks, “Why am I your friend?”
“Can we not be friends?”
The man sighs and stares toward the front of the bus. “I don’t usually make friends on the bus. Do you?”
Max shrugs. “Sometimes.”
Annoyed, he asks, “What’s with the arm?”
“I am a bona fide prosthetic sales man. I’m not only a proponent of these life-changing devices, I’m also a customer.”
The man on the bus crosses his arms and looks out the window. “Did you lose the arm just to become a salesman?”
Max ignores the stranger’s annoyance. It’s good sales practice. “Nope. Used to transport the cocaine up from Colombia. They do not like it when you sample the product.”
He looks back at Max and wrinkles his eyebrows. “What? How’d you get involved in that?”
“How does one get involved in anything? You make friends with your coke dealer, and then you make friends with their coke dealer, and, voila. They’re asking you to move product on account of your private pilot’s license. I thought I was going to get off with just a warning because they took me to this fancy-ass house. I thought there was no way they would spill my blood anywhere up in there. Then they showed me a wood chipper.”
The stranger raises his eyebrows. “Damn.”
“They said blood was good for the soil or something. I guess they were right because that garden of theirs was amazing. Roses as big as your fist.” Max makes a fist in demonstration.
The man cracks a smile. “You know, you do seem very, chipper, about the whole thing.”
Max raises his eyebrows. “Puns? Really? That’s not very clever.”
The man laughs through his nose still staring forward.
Max rolls his eyes and shrugs. “I guess I do have a pretty positive outlook on all of it. Could’ve gone a lot different. They could’ve put my head in first.” Max shrugs. “They were merciful. Aside from that one fuck up, I was a good employee.” Max takes a breath before asking, “What do you do for a living?”
“I’m a teacher.”
Max reacts, “That’s a helluva job. What do you teach?”
“Math. Science. Reading more than anything else.”
“What kind of school? Public? Private?”
“It’s a public charter school for kids who don’t really fit in the regular public system. It’s called Denver Liberty High. A lot of kids that have been expelled from other schools, have criminal records, live on the streets.”
Max frowns. “Damn. How’d you end up with that gig?”
He sighs. “I guess I’m the kind of guy who falls into teaching because... it’s the only thing that seems halfway honest. Everything else is a lie to fool somebody else that they can’t do something themselves. The only lie you tell in teaching is the one about who you are. The one where you present yourself as this flawless role model while exaggerating the struggle it took to become that. If you’re lucky kids relate and start to believe in themselves.”
Max makes a shivering motion. “Geesh. I could never do that.”
The man next to him shrugs. “Eh, it’s a job, and I do get paid. Not as much as other people with college degrees, but better than either of my parents at my age.”
Max nods. “That’s good. That’s really good. Teachers should make more.”
The man continues. “I feel lucky. Really lucky to have the job that I have. Most people from where I grew up can’t find a decent job.”
Max looks distantly out the bus window. “That sounds tough.”
Something in the other man’s face changes as he looks at Max. “You probably don’t know anything about that, huh?”
Max wrinkles his eyebrows. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Why would you know what I mean. Your world must be delightfully singular. I imagine that as long as you’re in a white suburban environment, you’d be fine. But if I were to set you in the middle of one of my classrooms, you’d get eaten alive, not because of the color of your skin, but because you expect the world to meet you where you’re at instead of meeting the world somewhere in between.”
Max nods. “I can’t imagine...”
“What’s it’s like to be black? I imagine you can’t because you’re so… happy or pleased with yourself, or maybe oblivious to how other people live. And, yes, that might be because you’re white. Or maybe it’s just because you haven’t spent any time with people who aren’t white.”
Max smiles and looks down at the bus floor. “I’m trying to talk to you, now.”
“Yeah. I’m not trying to be a dick. It just weighs on you after a while. A lot of white people get indignant as if the world were already post-racial. They start talking about their struggles. How they earned their position through hard work without thinking about how much harder it might be with a different skin color.”
“Or the way people say, ‘All lives matter’ right after somebody says, ‘Black lives matter.’”
“Ooh. Don’t even get me started on that one. That’s willful ignorance of the fact that a disproportionate number of unarmed minorities are killed each year by the police.”
Max nods and sighs. “It’s messed up. It’s messed up.”
“We know it’s messed up, but when do we do anything about it? You have to go sell stuff. I have to go teach. It’s like we just change the channel when there’s a problem that looks too big.”
Max rears his head back a little. “Teaching can’t be like that though, right? You’re shaping minds every day.”
“I’m trying.” He shakes his head and stares out the window. “Sometimes it feels like painting by numbers. Like I’m part of a system preparing kids for a future that doesn’t exist. And the teachers I work with... some of them, not all of them… They have these unacknowledged biases that are not conducive to student learning. I don’t get how they got hired in the first place. They make these broad, sweeping statements about students, like, ‘That’s just the way these students are. You can’t expect them to do anything.’ It’s almost all minority
kids, too, you know. So their prejudices alter the way the kids work, even the way kids think of themselves. When a teacher doesn’t expect anything, a student won’t give anything either.”
Max smiles. “I can tell you must be a good teacher because you’re so passionate about this.”
“How could I not be passionate? I don’t have a choice. I’m fighting this slow-motion, day-to-day battle for the future. It’s not a traditional kind of fight. It’s the kind of fight where your opponent is an imagined future where kids miss a life of prosperity just because no one told them the rules of the game or how to break out of the game without breaking the law.”
Max looks down at the bus floor. “I wish my life had that much meaning. My struggles seem so small in comparison.”
“A struggle is a struggle and it can mean whatever you make it. My struggle is a part of who I am because no one expected me to finish high school, much less go to college. I had to prove them wrong.”
Max nods and thinks. “I don’t know if I’ve ever had to prove anyone wrong in that way. I don’t know if anyone has ever opposed my prosperity. What’s a struggle without opposition?” They sit in silence for an uncomfortable few minutes as the bus grumbles forward. Max glances at the stranger’s hand from the corner of his eye so that the stranger doesn’t notice. It’s a different pigment. It’s just a different shade. How does this tiny difference alter the path of a life? Too many ways to count, probably.
The stranger sighs. “You could be a part of the struggle. You could come talk about your career, in my classroom. Extend your privilege. Do you use math or science in your prosthetic sales?”
Max scratched the back of his head. “Mmmmm. I don’t know.”
“You’re hesitant since you lost your arm because of the cocaine thing. Whatever. It’s a good cautionary tale... as long as you’re clean now?”
Max nods. “Yeah. I don’t do that stuff anymore, but for reasons I don’t want to go into right now, I don’t think I’d be the best guest speaker for your students.”
The stranger sucked his teeth. “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”
Max pulls the cord for the bus to stop, stands up, and picks up his suitcase. “I’ll do what I can to be part of the solution. Good talking with you.” He steps off the bus and looks out over the mass of suburban houses and says to no one, “Somewhere in this suburban expanse there must be some who need prosthetic devices, and I will be their solution.”
29
Door to Door Sales
At the first house, a petite woman answers the door. Max offers his rubbery hand for a handshake. “How are you today, ma’am? My name is Maximus and I’m selling prosthetics this afternoon, and I was wondering if you might be interested.”
Max’s quick talking overwhelms the woman so much, she doesn’t notice the hand she’s shaking is not a real hand. Shocked, she jerks her hand away and rubs her fingers together as if some residue remains. Max looks the woman in the eyes but sees peripherally how she’s feeling her fingers to make sure they still exist. She asks, “What happened to your arm?”
“Shark… Yep… He bit me pretty good, didn’t he… Surfin’ like that down in the Gulf of Mexico ‘ll get ya every time. Just the way it is, I guess.” Max sighs.
“Oh… my goodness.”
“Shark could’ve easily taken the rest of me. I poked it right in the eye. It swam off and somebody called the paramedics. Lucky I didn’t bleed out.”
“Wow. Well, I don’t think I have any need for any prosthetics. I have all my limbs, as you can see.” She starts to shut the door.
“Ma’am, please wait. I don’t usually do this, but… you look like you could use a different type of prosthetic.” The idea came to him long ago when the sales of more publicly accepted prosthetics failed to bring in enough income. He diversified. He unsnaps the panel of his case with the models of the prosthetic arms and legs and turns it around.
The woman’s face goes blank. She blinks slowly and pushes the nosepiece of her glasses back up on her face. The idea settles in and the woman’s face scrunches up as her head tilts slightly. “You sell dildos door-to-door?”
Max puts up his artificial hand and shakes his head slightly. “Please, women’s sexual toys. ‘Dildo’ is a term best left for the middle-schoolers.”
The woman snaps out of her puzzlement. “What the hell did you mean by saying I looked like I could ‘use a different type of prosthetic’?”
“Well, uh, I just meant women in general could always use a sexual toy. I mean, dealing with men can be difficult. Am I right?” Max raises his eyebrows. “Maybe you don’t want to have to put the energy into,” he pauses, tilts his head and shrugs, “going out and putting on makeup, and saying the right things without being a,” he bites his lip and shrugs again, “whore and then getting just drunk enough to where you don’t care that he’s not Mr. Right. And who wants to deal with pregnancy scares? It’s all a pretty big hassle. And these offer a real, worry-free solution greater than most men can naturally provide.”
The woman’s perplexed eyes drift from him over to the collection of women’s sexual toys.
Max continues to hold the suitcase open for her, smiling. “You see this one has this French tickler for the clitoris. It’s the knobby thing right here. I’ve heard it called a French tickler, but I’m not sure that’s as technically accurate as knobby thingy. The bottom line is that it feels very good. I don’t know how much understanding you have of male anatomy, but no man has an extra knobby thing like this. There are the glass ones here as well. They’re a bit pricier, but they are dishwasher safe.”
She looks them over for a time and finally says, “Well… I have been curious about these types of toys for a long while, but those sex shop places are usually so sketchy… I didn’t want to go inside. And with the internet, who knows who’s keeping track of all your purchases with all those tracking cookies and spyware and viruses and such.”
“That’s my reasoning for going door-to-door.”
“Alright, how much for this little one here?”
“Ahh. The pocket-rocket is nineteen ninety-five. It’s a top seller because it fits easily inside your purse or bag, and it doesn’t share the same phallic shape of the larger models. If you were in a pinch, you could explain it away by saying it’s a massager.”
“I’ll take it.”
“Excellent.” Max reaches into the suitcase and gets out a box. “What color would you like? We have hot pink, black, and green.”
“Oh. Hot pink. Definitely. Let me get my purse.” Max waits outside with the hot-pink pocket-rocket in his hand. “All I have is a twenty.”
“Don’t worry. I have plenty of nickels.” She hands him the twenty, and he gives her the nickel from a dispenser attached to his belt. “You have a nice day, now.”
“Okay. Thanks. Umm… Don’t… tell any of the neighbors about this.”
“Your secret’s safe with me, ma’am.”
30
Searching for Plants
The man in the light blue suit, Zeke O’Brien, scans the Freedom Uprising Memorial Park and finds the fountain Alonzo told him had the plants. Why would Alonzo choose the fountain for a hiding spot? And where was the camera he had mentioned? It doesn’t matter. Just find the plants. He carefully climbs into the dried-up fountain. He walks all the way around it thinking that maybe they were under a ledge. He stops and runs the palm of his hand over his smooth, bald head in exasperation. He mumbles under his breath, “Alonzo is fuckin’ dead.” He steps back out of the fountain and walks with an agitated gait back towards the light blue Cadillac.
The Queen of the Universe silently observes the man in the light blue suit as he continues toward his car. “You lookin’ for some plants?” she asks as he passes her.
The man in the light blue suit immediately turns around. “What do you
know about my plants?”
“I saw a woman come by here not long ago carrying two plants and I tink she got dem outta dat fountain you just finished walking ‘round in. She dressed real nice so I figured it was time to collect her Universe Tax.”
“What the hell are you talkin’ about?”
The Queen of the Universe held up a wallet.
“I see. And that belongs to the lady that you saw take my plants?”
“Yep. How much you gonna pay for it?” She asks as she takes it back into her clutches.
He snaps out a bill from a tightly-wound roll. “I’ll give you twenty bucks.”
“Da Queen of da Universe knows you ain’t paid your Universe Tax in ages. Better make it fifty. Information ain’t cheap.”
He stares at the woman and tilts his head to the side. Too big to fit down the McDonald’s playground slide. “Fine.” He pulls out a fifty, smacks it spitefully into the woman’s hand, and snatches the wallet. As he continues his fierce pace, he flips through the wallet to find an address. “If you’re lying to me, I’m going to find you and get my fifty dollars back.”
31
Selling Out
Mew centers a nifty bowtie. The word “nifty” describes it because no one with dignity would ever use “nifty” to describe anything. The bowtie is a public display of his own subservience required for his job. He bites his tongue gradually harder staring at himself in the mirror. What a waste. Tearing tickets and playing security guard so kids are not sneaking in the exits. Writing up work schedules that fit everyone’s needs while ensuring a fully staffed concession stand and clean-up crew. To choose this instead of casual Fridays, better pay, less responsibility, afternoon games of Call of Duty on the company server, and fewer interactions with annoying people makes him wonder why he quit that old job. Ideological precept number ten: Do not take more than you need. (see appendix A).