Flash Point

by Nancy Kress

  “Where are your parents?”

  “Dead. I’m a fast learner—I can do anything you need!”

  “We’ll let you know,” the woman said. “Thank you for your time, Amy. You can exit through that—” The gray-haired man, who had so far said nothing, shifted his weight in his chair and instantly the woman stopped talking.

  He said, in a quiet and deep voice that she had heard somewhere before, “What TV shows do you watch?”

  Oh, shit. She was going to lose this job because the TV had been pawned six months ago and the only programs she ever saw were those playing in the restaurant kitchen: sports or fashion parades or, when Charlie was the only one there, porn. Could she lie? No, he’d catch her at it. She choked out, “Not . . . not too much TV. I read a lot.”

  “And take care of your grandmother.”

  “Yes.”

  “Your application says you work part-time at a restaurant. Why not full-time?”

  “I couldn’t find a full-time job. I looked.”

  “You may go.”

  Amy took a stumbling step toward the door, then straightened. The hell with them. She walked the rest of the way as regally as she could manage—she was Queen Elizabeth I, Anne Boleyn on her way to the scaffold, Mary Queen of fucking Scots. Quietly she closed the door behind her, proud that she hadn’t slammed it.

  Another guard, another short corridor, another door, and she was out on the street, the cold March wind blowing through Kaylie’s thin silk sweater.

  * * *

  “I vote we use her,” said the kind-faced woman.

  “She’s not really pretty,” the bald man said. “Our viewers will want—”

  “She could be prettier,” the woman said, “with some makeup and decent clothes. That green sweater is all wrong for her coloring. She won’t be a startling beauty like some of the others, but pretty enough.”

  “Chess?” the bald man said. “Not exactly a ratings grabber.”

  “She’s athletic.”

  “That’s not enough, by itself. Although the poverty might help. She’ll be willing to do anything.”

  “She’s clearly intelligent.”

  “But not pretty enough!”

  “I’m a bit worried about that defiant streak in her—although it could be an asset.”

  “Could also be a liability. If it’s us she gets defiant toward.”

  “Even then. Viewers might like it.”

  “I vote instead for the redhead with the great boobs.”

  “Alex, this isn’t the program you used to produce! Mark, what do you think?”

  The young man shrugged without looking up from his tablet. “I don’t care. I don’t know why I’m in on this meeting at all. My tech will work with whomever you pick.”

  The bald man said, “She has a likeable quality—I’ll give her that. Worth a screen test to see if it comes through on camera.”

  The woman said, “Shape that hair a bit, enhance the eyes . . .”

  The gray-haired man cleared his throat. The others immediately fell silent and turned toward him. “Take her,” he said. And that was that.

  Two

  THURSDAY

  AMY WALKED HOME to save the bus fare: 102 blocks. The city in miniature, she thought, and then snorted because the thought was so unoriginal. Even graffiti on the side of a crumbling building said TIMES BE TOUGH MAN. Like everyone didn’t already know.

  First the waterfront: idle rusting machinery that used to bustle with container ships coming and going. Empty warehouses on streets that she would never have dared walk after dark. A lot of the buildings had been colonized by homeless people, including the packs of abandoned children that roamed the city, begging and thieving. Farther on was a shopping area with half the stores boarded up—but at least that meant that the other half were open. Then uphill to an actual thriving neighborhood with pretty houses, flowerbeds, and heavy-duty electronic surveillance. The pretty houses gradually grew shabbier until Amy trudged past the kind of apartment houses where the “courtyard” was full of discarded syringes. More stores, becoming brighter and cleaner the farther she walked, until she passed a high brick wall topped with barbed wire. Back in there, she guessed, were houses for the rich—not that she would ever find out for sure. Then more houses, these subdivided into apartments, becoming seedier and cheaper until she reached her own.

  Two blocks before she got there, the bottoms of her feet ached so much that she sat for a moment on a crate left out for the trash. Since trash pickup was erratic at best, a crate could be there a very long time. Now, however, it was still solid and relatively clean and Amy sank down gratefully. At least with all that exercise she was no longer cold.

  A half-dressed girl ran out of the nearest house.

  The phantom that sliced into Amy’s mind was so sharp it brought her to her feet. A baby rabbit, struggling to free itself from an iron trap around its leg, the cruel teeth cutting into the bloody flesh. However, this girl was no baby. She was about Amy’s age, beautiful and wild-eyed, her bright red lips drawn back and her exposed breasts turning blue-veined with cold. A man dashed out after her, caught her easily, and pinned her arms to her sides. He began to drag her back inside.

  “Stop!” Amy cried before she knew she was going to say anything.

  The girl and man both looked at her, and it was the girl who spoke. “Mind your own business, slut!” She twisted in the man’s arms and snarled, “I said twenty, and I mean twenty!”

  “All right, all right!” He let her go and glared at her. They both walked back into the building.

  Well, I certainly misjudged that. So why the rabbit in a trap? Were her phantoms becoming inaccurate? No—the images that leapt so unpredictably into her mind were always true. This particular rabbit was so deep into the trap that she didn’t even know there could be anything else but the leg iron.

  Not me. Not ever me, nor Kaylie either. No matter what I have to do.

  She unlocked the front door of her building, an uncared-for house subdivided into too many too-small apartments. The vestibule was once again filled with trash. The landlady, Mrs. Raduski, poked her head from her ground floor apartment, followed by her growling dog. The schnauzer was the terror of the building, biting unpredictably and without provocation. Mrs. Raduski said, “You the one who dumped all this—oh, it’s you, Amy.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Raduski.”

  “You know who dumped all this here?”

  Amy did, but she said, “No, sorry.”

  “None of you tenants worth your rent.” She slammed her door.

  But you need our rent. You have to live, just like the rest of us. You and that mangy dog. Not that Amy would ever say that aloud. Why not? Was it politeness or need that made her meet Mrs. Raduski’s rudeness with courtesy?

  No contest there. It was need. Need made you tolerate a lot that you shouldn’t. But there were limits.

  Amy climbed the twisting stairs to the third floor. Inside the cramped apartment, Gran was asleep and Kaylie was out. Kaylie hadn’t closed up the sofa bed where she and Amy slept, or done the lunch dishes. Bread sat out on the counter where it could attract rats. Amy dreaded rats. The rodents would have horrified her even if they hadn’t been the carriers of so many fast-mutating diseases. The Collapse had brought new diseases to the city and dried up funding to fight the old ones. There had even been a few cases of bubonic plague, as if this were medieval Europe—and Kaylie knew all that! But there the bread sat.

  Amy put it away, wiped down the counter, and carefully folded Kaylie’s sweater back into their shared dresser. The apartment had only two rooms: a small bedroom for Gran and the front room with one window overlooking the street. One wall held a stove, a tiny fridge, and one square foot of counter space. Into the rest of the room crowded the sofa bed, a rickety table with four chairs, a shabby easy chair for Gran, and the dresser.

  It was all so different from the house they’d lived in before the Collapse: Gran’s house with its bright kitchen, big living r
oom lined with bookshelves, pretty bedrooms for Kaylie and Amy, trees in the backyard. Gran hadn’t been sick then. They hadn’t been rich, but Amy had gone to a good magnet school; Kaylie had guitar lessons; a woman named Rosa had taken care of them both while Gran was at her lab. There had been camping trips, museums, new school clothes each year. For some reason, Amy especially remembered a blue coat with gold buttons on the shoulder, from sixth grade. She’d loved that coat. She’d worn it too long after it no longer fit, just to feel the fine wool in her fingers.

  Now Gran—so fragile and thin—lay in bed with a flimsie across her chest: SCIENCE NOW. Amy had printed it yesterday at a publishing kiosk downtown. Gran’s body might be dying but her mind was still sharp with the wonderful pre-Collapse education Amy would never have. Once she had been a biologist, earning advanced degrees when that was still rare for a woman. She still liked to keep up with the world, and Amy intended to squeeze out money for flimsies no matter what else she had to do without.

  She woke. “Amy?”

  “Hi, Gran. I’m back.”

  “Did you get the waitressing job?”

  “No, the job was filled. What can I get you, Gran?”

  “Nothing. I’m fine, honey.”

  Gran was not fine. All but one of the blankets in the house were piled on the bed, yet goose bumps prickled the forearm exposed by her hold on the flimsie. Amy reached over to pull the blanket up to her chin. The free clinic had made a tentative diagnosis but had no equipment or funds to do anything about it except provide pain pills. Some days the pills worked, some days they didn’t. Amy accidentally jostled the bed and Gran moaned. Amy said, “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize—”

  “Open up in there!” Pounding on the apartment door.

  Amy and Gran looked at each other. Gran said, “Don’t—” but Amy was already at the door, peering through the peephole. A cop stood gripping Kaylie by the arm.

  A trash can, slimy with something rotten at the bottom . . .

  “Open up!”

  Amy undid the chain and deadbolt. Kaylie cried, “Let me go, you fucker!” The cop dragged Amy’s sister inside.

  “You this girl’s guardian?”

  “Yes,” Amy said, even though she wasn’t. In the bedroom Gran tried to rise and couldn’t. “What happened?”

  “Shoplifting,” the cop said. His small, piggish eyes traveled around the apartment, taking in the shabbiness but also the teak dresser, which Gran had saved from before the Collapse, and the George III silver tea set that had been a wedding gift to her and Gramps sixty years ago. Not even Kaylie had suggested pawning that.

  Amy said, “Is Kaylie under arrest?”

  The cop met her gaze. He looked again at the silver, then pointedly back at Amy. “I might let her off with a warning. Depends.”

  “On what?” Amy said. Did he know her knees were trembling?

  “You wouldn’t want her in prison. Pretty little thing like her.”

  “She’s a juvenile.”

  “Them places are worse,” he said, and Amy knew he was right. Everybody heard the stories.

  Kaylie yelled, “If you don’t let me go, you fucker, I’ll—”

  “Shut up,” Amy told her. She went to Gran’s desk, took out the envelope with Mrs. Raduski’s rent, and handed it to him. “This is all we have.”

  He let go of Kaylie, who for once stopped yelling. Maybe even she realized what could happen—and wouldn’t it be nice if just once she had thought of that before? The cop opened the envelope, counted the money, and made a face. His eyes went again to the silver.

  “Please,” Amy said, “it really is all we have. It’s the rent.”

  Wordlessly he pocketed the envelope and turned to go. Probably he realized that the silver would be too easy to trace at any pawnshop. Just don’t say anything, Kaylie, just for once shut up—

  She did, at least until the door closed. Amy locked it and whirled on her sister. “How could you? Don’t you—”

  “I didn’t do it!” Kaylie cried reflexively. But a minute later she reached into the waistband of her jeans, smiled slyly, and produced a long piece of rich silk, which she carried into the bedroom. “Anyway, it’s for Gran. Look, Gran, what I brought you!”

  The scarf hadn’t been for Gran, not from Kaylie and not in that color. The green just matched Kaylie’s eyes, that clear and startling emerald that made such a contrast with her pale skin and black curls. Six inches taller than Amy’s five-two, Kaylie had the kind of figure that made men ride their bicycles into oncoming traffic. The sisters looked nothing alike, and next to her gorgeous, larcenous sister Amy usually felt washed out. Right now she just felt furious.

  “Kaylie, do you know what you’ve just done? The rent is due in three days!”

  “Oh, you’ll come up with something,” Kaylie said. “You always do. Saint Amy.”

  Amy wanted to kick her. Gran gazed at Kaylie with reproachful, helpless eyes. Amy pulled Kaylie and her silk scarf out of Gran’s room, closed the door, and pinned her sister against the peeling wall. “If you ever again dare to—”

  “Shut it off, Amy—you don’t own me!”

  “The rent—”

  “All right, all right! I’ll get the money by Friday!”

  That was worse. The girl with the exposed breasts, the rabbit in the trap— “How? How will you get it?”

  “That’s my business!”

  “No, it’s mine! If you think you’re going to—”

  Kaylie flexed both arms and threw Amy off her. Amy staggered against the table, righted herself, and prepared to lunge back, even while the rational part of her mind said Don’t don’t don’t don’t do it—

  She didn’t. Another pounding on the door stopped both girls. They stared at each other until Mrs. Raduski’s raspy voice came through the door: “Amy! You got a phone call! Who said you could give out my number for your own personal business? Huh?”

  “I didn’t,” Amy said, to no one. She opened the door. Mrs. Raduski, followed by the snarling schnauzer, shot her a look that could wither a cactus, but she held out a cell phone, one of the few in the neighborhood not owned by drug dealers. The mystery of why Mrs. Raduski would bother to bring the call upstairs was solved with her next words. “It’s TLN,” she said reverently, as if in church. “The television people. Why do they want to talk to you?”

  Amy took the phone. “Hello?”

  “Amy Kent?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Myra Townsend. We interviewed you this afternoon for a job. We’d like you to come back tomorrow for a second interview, ten a.m., same place. You’re one of our final candidates for the job.”

  Phantoms almost never sprang from voices alone, but this one did: a deep hole, lined with silk as rich and luxurious as the scarf that dangled from Kaylie’s suddenly rigid hand.

  Three

  FRIDAY

  GRAN HAD EXPLAINED Amy’s phantoms. Before the Collapse and her long illness, Gran had been Dr. Amelia Whitcomb, working in a genetics lab, decoding how genes determined personality. Amy, she said, just happened to have a combination of genes especially good at assimilating unconscious observations of people’s body language, subtle facial shifts, tones of voice, and perhaps even pheromones. Lightning-swift, Amy’s brain put these all together and, because she also had genes for strong visual imagery, translated these observations into metaphorical pictures.

  The only thing problematic about Gran’s analysis was that it felt wrong.

  Amy knew there was more to the phantoms than genes, although she didn’t know what. She sensed it. There was more. If she could have gone on to college, it would have been to study neurology and investigate that “more.”

  None of this was on her mind the next morning as she loitered outside the warehouse at nine thirty. Fortunately, the weather was much warmer than yesterday; you could almost believe spring might come to the city. The air held a sweetness unaccounted for by the polluted river and uncollected trash. Where did it come from, that
mysterious spring sweetness that always seemed to promise so much? It made your heart ache for something you couldn’t even name.

  Amy was early because she hadn’t wanted to take a chance on the bus schedule, which could be wayward. Also, from her position across the street and partly hidden by a Dumpster, she hoped to catch a glimpse of other candidates for “her” job.

  Was that boy a candidate? Wiry, only a few inches taller than she, dressed in jeans and a faded brown sweater. He was twenty minutes early but marched right up to the door, knocked, and was admitted. Amy prepared to follow him when a bus stopped and a girl got out. Violet Sanderson! Was she Amy’s competition? Amy figured she might as well go home right now. Violet, her long black hair so gleaming it practically reflected the building, wore high-heeled sandals and one of the new dresses set with tiny mirrors. Not a designer original, Amy’s expert eye decided, but a decent copy. Violet disappeared into the building. Amy crossed the street.

  A guard guided her through security; no sign of Violet or the boy. This time she was led in a different direction, down a long cinder-block corridor to a small room containing only a metal desk, a chair, and another door. “Wait here.”

  “Is there a mistake?” This looked nothing like yesterday’s luxury. “I’m here for an interview with—”

  “Wait here.”

  Amy waited. The room was cold. The chair was cold under her ass. The desk drawers were all empty. The second door was locked. There was nothing to look at on the walls. Amy was just about to go back to the corridor and shout for somebody—anybody!—when the guard returned, crossed the room, and unlocked the second door.

  “You can go now.”

  “Go?”

  “They picked somebody else.”

  Amy stared at him: his impassive face, his hard eyes. No phantom came to her, but outrage did. “That’s it? That’s it?”