by Unknown
“Are you one of those fucking Dollar Bills?” asked the clerk. “You must be fucking giddy—”
“Come on, man, I have nothing to do with this,” said McKinley, dropping coins on the counter, head lowered to skew the recognition software. “I just haul trash. I’m not happy when a man dies. I can’t be—”
The clerk slid the coins to his side of the bulletproof glass. Black hair in cornrows, forearm tattoos wrapped in dress-code appropriate ace bandages. Stitched on his Quick Stop shirt: Ernesto.
“My cousin hauled trash,” he said. “Until the city passed the spic laws and the Dollar Bills took his job. Scabs. The City deported him under the Gainful Employment Act—”
Breaking News on TV – an impromptu funeral procession for Ockley. Hundreds of people – immigrants and illegals, mostly, but families of illegals joined with white leftists, teenage anarchists and hippy sympathizers – gathered near Ritter’s. City of Pittsburgh Police in riot gear were already on hand, but keeping a distance. An armored truck emitting sound blasts to disperse the crowd was ineffective. Some of the activists threw rocks, which pinged off the officers’ helmets or were easily parried with their clear shields. The funeral rally disturbed the crime scene. Ritter’s was flooded with immigrants. A group of Indian Muslims took Ockley’s body and wrapped it in linen. They carried him above the crowd, shouting and near tears.
“I didn’t ask to haul trash,” said McKinley. “One day I just woke up in a tube, the next I’m emptying dumpsters—”
“My cousin had valid documentation, man, but they kicked him out because he couldn’t find a qualifying job. You know what happened to him? He was a mule in Tijuana and a cartel cut his fucking head off. UPMC created you Dollar Bill mother fuckers to take his job, and then he dies crossed up with the narc they pumped into Mexico—”
“That’s conspiracy bullshit—”
“Bullshit? Then why’s Ockley dead? You dumb fuck. Ockley was going to fix this. He was going to break those fuckers apart—”
McKinley didn’t stick around for his change. Back in his car, the dash clock told him he was turning thirty years old. He watched the digits flip from 4:59 to 5:00am.
“Happy fucking birthday,” he said.
McKinley drove. Aiken was closed by police barricade – officers in gasmasks and helmets, black riot armor and submachine guns directing traffic away from the funeral procession. McKinley could see firelight from the rally and heard gunshots fired into the air. He followed detours through Friendship and East Liberty, behind snowplows scraping paths through the sludge rain. What have I done?
East Liberty and Highland. McKinley spotted another pay phone at a defunct Sunoco – boarded windows, tattered plastic bags shrouding the pumps. McKinley pulled around back and hunched in the rain to make his call – another £2 coin, another twenty unanswered rings.
He’d met Dr. Fielding at Big Jim’s in the Run – a Dollar Bill bar, down in Greenfield near the train trestle. Big Jim’s décor was grease: grease-saturated faux wood panels, grease-stained carpets, grease-shined tabletops. This was three months ago, McKinley celebrating the thirtieth of a Milhous Nixon he knew from finishing school. The place was crawling with Nixons and friends of Nixons, rowdy drunks every one of them, a few McKinleys, a W. or two. The Steelers were on the 27-inch above the bar. McKinley sipped Drambuie. The place was overcrowded, thick with tobacco smoke. A line of men sat at the bar downing beers and groaning at the quarterback play, but most of the room was teeming with Presidents. The few Citizens at the party had picked out their Palins and snuck away to dim corners, slow dancing and groping the girls. Fielding collapsed into McKinley’s booth, making like he needed a break from the party.
“Fucking Logan’s Run in here,” he said. “This is depressing. I’m Fielding, by the way—”
“Oh, shit, I know who you are,” said McKinley, recognizing the man from the monthly newsletters. “You’re the director of the program – I think I have your signature tattooed on my ass—”
Fielding laughed, “You probably do—”
“You knew Nix?”
“I helped him out from time to time,” said Fielding. “I’m a chemist, remember. Nix liked certain cocktails. Are you interested? You’re about twenty-nine, aren’t you? Maybe a bit younger? We could party—”
Fielding was close to sixty, McKinley guessed – a mythical age, as far as he was concerned. The doctor’s hair was curly but ashen gray, his face pocked and somewhat ruddy – almost elfin in its features, with long smile lines creasing the corners of his bright eyes.
“Twenty-nine,” said McKinley.
“Twenty-nine? Come outside with me,” said Fielding. “This place is too crowded for old men like us. I can give you an early birthday present—”
The Steelers closed into halftime and McKinley needed to piss anyway.
“Fine,” he said. He downed the last watery sips of his Drambuie and chewed the ice. The two men threaded through the crowd and left the bar. Outside was quiet, with snow drifting from the black sky in fat, grayed flakes. Snow piled in blackish drifts, ice caked in mud with a sheen of oil. McKinley pissed against Big Jim’s wall and followed Fielding around back, between houses lit by the Steelers on television, into a gravel field, the security lights busted out.
“Here,” said Fielding, and McKinley smoked.
They passed the joint without speaking, watching the blur of lights on the 376 overpass as if they were stars. Fielding rubbed his hands for warmth and shivered.
“Are you afraid of dying?” Fielding asked. “I know how it’s supposed to work, but I’ve never really asked a President before. We’re terrified of dying – normal citizens, I mean. We’ve spent years trying to break the Biblical Barrier, and even now that a person with good healthcare can break 140 or 50 easily, nothing’s changed. Life blinks by just as fast. We’re just as fucking scared of dying as we used to be and still regretful about all the years we’ve wasted. But look at you – calm, even though you’re almost 30—”
“I don’t think I’m afraid of dying, but there’s a dream I get from time to time,” said McKinley. “I’m riding a horse – this black horse, shiny with sweat and muscles. I realize I’m in a war – wearing a blue wool jacket. I have a musket and something happens – it differs depending on the dream – either a musket shot flies past, or an explosion. The horse stumbles and I’m falling. I wake up. I’m sweaty and nauseous. I guess that might be a fear of death, but it dissipates. After that, I don’t feel a thing, brother. I can’t—”
“Well, what if you could?” said Fielding. “What if I could fix you? What if I had the drugs to block out your Sterilites and dampen your genetic restrictors? What if you could discover the ecstasies of religion? What if I could help you have sex? What if I could let you live a little bit longer? I can’t let you live forever…but maybe another five years?”
“That’s a big what if—”
“Not fucking what if,” said Fielding, laughing. “I work for the UPMC.”
“What are you trying to sell me?” said McKinley.
“I’m not selling you a damn thing, Mr. McKinley,” said Fielding. “Come with me. There’s something I’d like to show you—”
The Run was unplowed and McKinley trudged through snow, following Fielding in silence. Small houses in a valley of shadow, the lights from the overpass unable to reach this far into the Run, the sounds of a thousand cars nothing more than a distant whisper. Fielding led McKinley up the block toward the Orthodox Church that had once prayed over the corpse of Andy Warhol, its onion domes catching streetlamp light and glinting gold. An ambulance was parked on the street, Three Rivers EMS.
“In here,” said Fielding.
“You want me to get in there?” asked McKinley.
“Come on,” said Fielding. “What are you scared of?”
McKinley took a last pull of the joint before flicking it away – a burning arc of light falling into snow. “I guess nothing—”
The back of t
he ambulance was cramped, but with enough room for McKinley on the bench and Fielding in a swivel chair. They squinted in the sudden fluorescent glare of the truck, their faces pallid and drawn with shadows. Fielding pulled shades over the rear windows.
“Cozy,” he said, removing a leather satchel from beneath the driver’s seat. He unzipped the bag and lifted a syringe and vial. He filled the syringe with liquid.
“You have a girlfriend?” asked Fielding.
“Sure,” said McKinley. “An occasional Palin—”
“Presidential romances are sweet,” said Fielding. “Chaste like perfect teenagers – holding hands and going out to dinner on your meager allowances. You and your Palin feel companionship, but you can’t feel love. You can’t fuck. I don’t know if you’ve ever felt her up or would even want to, but I know your sex drive is abysmally low. And that’s not all, Mr. McKinley. You have some emotional sensitivity, but you’ve been programmed to feel extreme nausea at the thought, let alone the intention, of violence. The idea of God has been stripped from you, even though platitudes have been programmed into your genes. You go to church every Sunday by genetic compulsion, but I know damn well you’ve never had a religious experience. The reason you don’t fear death is partly biological…it’s partly the way we’ve programmed you…but it’s partly because your lives are already a living death. You are deadened slaves. I want to give you life, Mr. McKinley. I want to give you freedom. Roll up your sleeve—”
“What is that?” said McKinley. “We do drug testing, man. Listen, they take urine samples from us. I can’t—”
Fielding tapped a vein, pressed the fluid into McKinley’s forearm.
“Holy shit,” said McKinley, his eyes widening, his mouth gasping for breath. “Oh my God, oh my God—”
“That’s life,” said Fielding. “That’s what citizens feel every moment of every day. That feeling is nothing more than having the veil lifted, my friend. I can give you life. I can give you freedom. I can give you pleasure. We have gene therapy that can extend your life a solid five years, if not a bit more: imagine, a William McKinley celebrating his thirty-fifth birthday. I can give you the therapy, and I can get you out of the country to enjoy it. UPMC has resources—”
“Haiti,” said McKinley. “I want to go to Haiti. I want to see the sun—”
Fielding’s plan had seemed simple: Kill the councilman. Make a payphone to payphone call to Fielding after the kill. If everything went smoothly, Fielding was to tell him a location, a place where McKinley could ditch his car. Fielding was to meet him there with the ambulance. The gene therapy was to be immediate, conducted en route to the airport. At parting, McKinley was to receive: a flight ticket, a passport, a room key to the Kingfisher resort in Haiti, a wad of cash.
“How do you know your councilman will come to Ritter’s?” McKinley had asked.
“I have someone working for me. She’ll get him there, it’s no problem—”
But it was a real fucking problem – a double –homicide, sparking citywide riots. McKinley already pegged as the killer, his face and serial code flashed on every TV and Mobile. Fielding nowhere. McKinley let the payphone ring, huddled against the oozing rain. Thirty times, thirty-five. No one answered.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he said, slamming the phone against the cradle until the hooks broke. “Shit—”
A heavier rain left oily slicks with a variegated sheen on sidewalks and the Sunoco parking lot. In the car, the Demagogue spoke: And the savages – all the inferiors of the world that come to our great nation like parasites to suck our blood and infect the fat of the land. They riot, murder, loot and burn the very neighborhoods where we’ve let them live—
McKinley coughed – a deep, wet rattling in his chest – and he knew his thirty years on this earth were almost up, that his innards, as he’d seen in countless instructional videos, were beginning to jellify and break apart. His eyes locked onto ambulances as he drove, sirens whirring past despite the rain-spattered streets.
A body on the street. Anarcho-kids, faces covered with handkerchiefs, beat it with baseball bats. McKinley sped past the scene, catching that the victim was a W. Bush, his body torn apart like tissue paper from the violence and the lubricating rain. McKinley fished out the last two white pills, chewed and swallowed – the nausea softening. These riots sparked from time to time, he knew, and Presidents were attacked – unable to defend themselves because of their anti-violence reflexes. Millions in city property lost, millions in personal property lost if the riots reached into Shadyside, where families owned Hoovers for butlers.
McKinley threaded through a police line set up to contain the riots. He drove into Shadyside, through the United Pittsburgh Medical Conglomerate main campus; the sprawling structure of interconnected glass lit hospital-white, gleaming despite the drizzling sludge. Every inch of surface was covered with light projection adverts – women’s eyes with Versace diamond-lashes, Vuitton by Murakami cartoons gorging on handbags, Ralph Lauren blondes playing croquet in shimmering sundresses. Forty-foot Burberry close-ups of women’s feet in plaid high heels. Armani, Cartier, Miu Miu.
McKinley parked where he could, blocking a hydrant near Ellsworth and St. James. He hunkered in his jacket, coming out of the rain into the Galleria and the Emergency Room entrance, hiding his face from the commercial scanners that plied him with coupons and sales, trying to pin his identity – What’s your name? Anything you want, the UPMC has it. What are you looking for? – runway models carved from light walking with him, directing him to boutiques. Nurses in tailored white suits wheeled patients through the ER receiving doors and down the Galleria halls. The mall teemed with Presidents bloodied in riot violence. McKinley scrolled through a hospital roster until he found him, the man’s photograph a smiling, airbrushed publicity still from ten years ago, maybe twenty: Fielding, Richard Felix. Bioinorganic Procedures, Director.
Near the Cancer Ward, a commercial scanner caught McKinley’s retina: an alarm sounded even as the commercials adjusted themselves to suit his profile. McKinley ran, but American Eagle Outfitters’ personalized window display caught his attention: a blonde with vanilla skin, impossibly gorgeous, with dimples and radiant blue eyes. She climbed on a wooden fence wearing cut-off jeans and a Union Jack t-shirt. McKinley coughed, gagging on fluids he kicked up from his lungs. He coughed again, sprayed slurries of bloodied vomit on the display window. Tears streamed like molten iron from his eyes, blurring his vision. One of the nurses approached him and asked if he needed to be admitted to the ER.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m dying—”
He followed the nurse, Galleria stores layering displays to appeal to him. All around, nurses hustled battered and vandalized Presidents onto gurneys or in wheelchairs. McKinley wondered what the other Presidents saw when they looked at the Galleria stores – what sorts of advertisements vied for their attention and plied their vestigial dreams.
Once into triage, McKinley left the nurse and wandered white hospital halls. He swallowed down a mouthful of mucous-thickened blood, scanning room numbers as he made his way from department to department. Patients convalescing, televisions tuned to broadcasts of the funeral procession. The riots surrounding the funeral were gaining momentum. In the processional’s wake, cars burned or were overturned, windows broken. Presidents lay dead in the streets.
McKinley found the doctor in his office.
“Fielding?” he said.
Doctor Fielding sat at his desk, flipping through paperwork, his bifocals perched on the bridge of his nose. At McKinley’s voice, the man looked up and smiled.
“William,” he said. “I was wondering if you’d show up. Come in, have a seat—”
“I came for my tickets,” said McKinley. “Why didn’t you pick up the phone? I killed that guy—”
“You did a lot more than fucking kill that guy,” said Fielding. “You also killed a woman. She was a colleague, a damn promising colleague. You weren’t supposed to kill anyone but Ockley, you dumb fuck. You
’re not getting anything from me—”
“We had a deal,” said McKinley, coughing. He searched his pockets for any more of the white pills, but he’d used them all.
“I’ve already given you more than any President deserves,” said Fielding.
Fielding turned back to his paperwork. McKinley lunged at him, to kill him if he could, but waves of nausea flooded him and he crumpled to the carpet. Doctor Fielding never looked up from his paperwork, even as McKinley struggled to rise. He stumbled and crawled from the room, the world spinning, running the white halls away from the doctor. McKinley gagged, and a stream of cold fluids poured from his mouth and nostrils.
“Christ,” he said. “Fucking Christ.” But further down the hallway he vomited again – more blood and the soggy remains of organs. He made his way back through the Galleria, the flashing adverts hazy through his bloody tears. McKinley swayed and staggered, the storefronts again layering adverts for his attention. He passed Gap, the models in bikinis, healthy and clean, all climbing into a hot tub together at the Kingfisher resort and spas, looking out into the starry vista of the Haitian night.
McKinley stumbled outside, gasped for air – but the rain damped in his lungs and he choked, spitting watery blood. His skin flaked before fissuring, covering him with snowy dandruff. Blood ran into his eyes from fissures opening over his scalp and stung him. He wandered vaguely towards his car, but forgot where he had parked.
Sirens, but what did it matter. The rainwater leaking through his boots eroded his feet to clumps and McKinley fell to his knees. Instinct. He crawled, whimpering. He found a hedgerow and slid between the branches, burying his head in his arms. He squirmed from his clothes, naked like a pale worm in the mud. His skin melted in the rain and rinsed to the gutters. He was a smooth white lump, featureless except for the more resistant bones – elbows, knees – jagged and poking through the membrane.
The torchlight funeral for Ockley crashed through the night like a rolling scream of prayer and gunfire. McKinley’s eyes floated wide in his bald face, unable to blink and staring at the procession as it passed. It flowed like a poisoned river, threatening property violence to the manicured lawns of Shadyside. Scared citizens watched from dim upstairs windows, hiding their Presidents in basements or garages until the unpleasantness might pass.