Homeland

by Doctorow, Cory

  It’s funny, but I liked him right off. Something in that voice—he sounded like someone who thought hard about things, and who was listening hard to everything he heard.

  “I’m glad you called me, Marcus. I know you’ve been involved in little-p politics before, but as far as I can tell, you don’t have any experience with the big-P kind, the kind that involves elections and so on. Is that right?”

  “That’s right, sir.” I thought, Ah well, it was worth a shot. I didn’t have the experience he was looking for after all.

  But he said, “That’s fine. We’ve got lots of experience with that sort of thing around here. Listen, Marcus, I want to give you a sense of the challenge we’re up against here, and then maybe you can tell me whether you think you’re the right sort of person to help us out.

  “Now, California’s got a reputation for being a little crazy, but we’re trying to do something that’s crazy even by California standards. You know I’m an independent candidate, right?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “The received wisdom here is that ‘independent’ is a synonym for ‘unelectable.’ The Dems and the Republicans have got all the major donors sewn up, they’ve got efficient machines, they’ve got close friends at every TV and radio station and newspaper in the state, and they’ve got national organizations they can draw on. Independents start with a huge disadvantage, and it only gets worse when push comes to shove, because if we gain even a little ground, well, the big boys bring in their big boys and crush us like bugs.

  “I could have gotten the Democratic nomination. They know me from my days at City Hall, they know that this district is one where African-American candidates generally do well, and I’m thought of as a decent sort who can be relied upon to raise a decent amount of cash and stay honest and sober once he gets elected, which puts me far ahead of most of the jokers around these parts.

  “I could have had the nomination. Between you and me, they asked, several times, and in several ways. They seemed pretty sure that a campaign for Joe Noss would be something of a sure bet. But the more I thought about this, the more I realized that I didn’t want the nomination. I’ve seen what it means to be elected with major party support: it means that you have to toe the line. By which I mean, when there is a vote where your conscience tells you to go one way and party discipline tells you to go the other way, well, you’d best tell your conscience to sit that one out.

  “That wouldn’t be so bad if you could trust the party, but I can’t say as I trust either party in this country. You’ve got ‘progressive’ Democratic presidents who believe it’s legal to assassinate American citizens overseas, who think that we should be spying on phone calls and email without warrants—well, I could go on, but I think you know what I mean.”

  “I do,” I blurted. Maybe it was all the weird events of the past week, but listening to Joe talk made me excited, made me want to go out and man a barricade for him or something. It was the way he talked, even over the phone; it made you feel like whatever this guy was doing, it was going to work, and that if you were lucky, you’d get to be a part of it.

  “I believe you do, Marcus! But it’s not just the Dems, of course. I know many Republicans who are honorable, generous, thoughtful people. My father was one such Republican. But there are power brokers in the Republican party who are insane. I don’t say that as a figure of speech. I mean it literally. There are important movers and shakers in the RNC who believe that the Earth is five thousand years old. And these are people who made their fortunes pumping sweet crude in Texas! You think they tell their geoengineers to only pump oil in places that accord with the Young Earth theory of creation? Now, those people are hardly the worst—there’s plenty who think that torturing isn’t just something you have to do when there’s no alternative, but something you should do all the time. People who believe that anyone with ten million dollars is, by definition, good, and anyone without ten cents to his name is, by definition, a criminal. The thought of being beholden to these—well, let’s use the word my daddy liked, because Daddy was a polite, well-spoken man, and he’d have called these people dunces—these dunces, well, I never even considered it for a moment.

  “No, I thought to myself, Joe, there’s some smart people who think you could win this election with their help. Maybe you could win it without their help. Maybe if you took up positions that people believed in, positions that were grounded in evidence and compassion, not ideology or lining your pockets, you’d be able to beat the all-powerful party machines and show up in the Senate without a single corporate logo sewn onto your suit jacket.

  “Of course, there was no way I’d be able to do this using the old-fashioned methods—all the tactics we developed to win elections in the last century. I knew that this campaign would rise or fall on the strength of our technology use.

  “Now, I might be over twenty-five”—he chuckled, a sound as deep as the ocean—“but I know a thing or two about technology. Enough, at least, to know how much I don’t know. Finding the right tech people has been my top priority since I started this thing, and I think I’ve found some good people who can do top-level strategy and such. But I haven’t found anyone to be my special forces commando, if you will. A doer, not just a thinker. So when your name came up, well, it made me excited, Marcus. I think you could be the delta force ninja of our technology team. Does that sound like your sort of thing?”

  My mouth was so dry I could barely talk and my palms were so sweaty I could barely hold the phone, but I managed to blurt out, “Yes, absolutely, that sounds like my dream job!”

  “I was hoping you’d say that. Now, it’s not my job to hire you, that’s my campaign manager’s job. But my recommendations do carry a little weight around here. I’m looking at her diary right now, and it looks like she’s free tomorrow morning at 8:30 A.M. That’s a little early for a night owl, I know, but if I were to put a meeting with you in her calendar, do you think you could make it?”

  “Even if I have to stay up all night, Mr. Noss.”

  “Call me Joe. And I hope that won’t be necessary. Get yourself some sleep and set an alarm. I’ll tell Flor to expect you at 8:30. That’s Flor Prentice Y Diaz. Let me spell it for you.”

  “It’s okay, I’ve just googled her,” I said.

  “Of course you have,” he said. “Do your research now, then get yourself into bed and don’t forget the alarm!”

  “I won’t,” I said.

  I spent the next twenty minutes poring over everything I could find about Flor Prentice Y Diaz—parents were Guatemalan refugees, raised in the Bay Area, master’s in public policy from Stanford, former executive director of a big homelessness charity. A photo showed a handsome but severe Hispanic woman in her fifties, wrinkles around her eyes and deep lines around her mouth, big dark eyes that seemed to bore straight through me. Then I noticed where the photo had come from: a profile in the Bay Guardian by Barbara Stratford. I checked the time in my menubar. It was coming up on midnight, which was probably too late to call Barbara and ask her to put in a good word for me. But I did send her an email asking her to drop my name to Flor Prentice Y Diaz if she got a chance. Email did have its uses.

  I checked the status of my big torrent download. The file was halfway down, and there were eight more downloaders in the swarm. I wondered how many of them worked for three-letter spy agencies in the DC area.

  There was a soft knock at my door. I opened it. It was Mom.

  “Hey, you,” she said. “How long have you been up?”

  “A couple hours, I guess,” I said. “I’m sorry I didn’t come downstairs, but when I checked my email, I found a message from Joseph Noss asking me to call him about the job, so I called him and he wants me to go in tomorrow morning to meet with his campaign manager at 8:30 A.M. I think I’ve found a job!”

  Mom smiled and reached out and stroked my hair, the way she used to do when I was a kid. It was a tell she had, whenever she was feeling especially proud of me. It made me happy all
over. “That’s wonderful news, love. How are you feeling, though?” Tentatively, she touched the tape over my nose. I flinched a little. The painkillers had worn off.

  “Well, my nose is still broken, but my headache is gone. Apart from that, I feel fine. It looks much worse than it is. And it could have been a lot worse. As it was, I basically tripped and fell on my face.” I shook my head. “There were lots of people who got hurt worse than me, caught right in the explosion.”

  She took her hand away. “I wish you’d called. We were—well, we were worried, Marcus.” She didn’t say anything about the other times I’d gone missing, like after the Bay Bridge blew up, when I was being held and humiliated on Treasure Island by Carrie Johnstone and her jolly friends from the DHS; or when I’d gone underground, run away with Zeb only to be caught by Johnstone again, this time for a round of simulated execution on her waterboard. Neither of those incidents had been very pleasant for me, but they’d been hell on my parents, too. I was a jerk.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I was fast asleep by the time we got back into cell-phone range. But yeah, you’re right, I should have called.”

  We sat there silently for a little while, each of us remembering the bad times before. “How’s your job search going, Mom?”

  “Oh,” she said, “oh, don’t worry about me. There’s little bits of contract work coming in all the time. Nothing earth-shaking, just a little freelance editing and such. But between that and the savings and Dad’s severance, we’re getting by.”

  I didn’t bother to ask what they would do when Dad’s severance ran out. I’d overheard them talking about that enough times to know that it was a sensitive subject—and the fact that they always shut up about it when I entered the room told me that they didn’t want me to worry about it. Dad had sold his car the month before and they’d listed the parking spot in our driveway for rent on Craigslist, which I thought was pretty clever, even if it would be weird to have some stranger using our driveway. But yeah, I could see what they could see: first you lose your job, then your car, then what? Mom had torn up her flowerbeds in the backyard and planted vegetables, which tasted great, but I knew that taste had less to do with things than the grocery bill did. The drawer full of takeout menus hadn’t been opened in months, and Mom and Dad had a tendency to disappear on the bus whenever Safeway had a big sale on meat, coming back with huge bags full for the freezer. I didn’t have anything against saving money, but I couldn’t help but wonder where it might all end. There were a lot of For Sale signs on our block, and one or two empty places with foreclosure notices taped to the door.

  “Well,” I said. “Got to get up early tomorrow!”

  “Are you going to wear a suit?” Mom said. “I could get something out of your father’s closet.”

  “Mom,” I said, “they’re hiring me to be their webmaster—I’m pretty sure they don’t want a dweeb in a suit.”

  She opened her mouth like she wanted to argue with me, then shut it again. “I’m sure you know what you’re talking about,” she said. “But just be sure to dress up smart, all right? No one likes a slob, even if he is the webmaster.”

  “Good night, Mom.”

  “I love you, Marcus.”

  “Love you, too.”

  * * *

  Good thing I set three alarms. I managed to switch off both my phone and my alarm clock without even waking, but the raging music blaring out of Lurching Abomination’s external speakers—Trudy Doo and the Speedwhores performing “Break It Off,” which features some of the craziest death-metal screaming ever to be committed to MP3 by an all-girl post-punk anarcho-queer power-trio—was impossible to sleep through. It was 7:15.

  I showered and peeled off the tape over my nose and grimaced at my beat-up face. Oh well, nothing to be done about it. Thinking of my mother’s advice, I dug through my closet and found a white button-up shirt that I’d last worn to my graduation, and the gray wool slacks I’d worn at the same event. I even found the brown leather shoes that went with the outfit, and gave them a vigorous wipe with an old sock, bringing out a bit of a shine. As I buttoned up the shirt and tucked it in and got the line of buttons even with my fly, I found myself growing excited. Mom was right (as usual): dressing up made me feel competent, like the kind of guy you’d want to hire.

  Dad was already at the kitchen table, eating oatmeal with sliced bananas and strawberries.

  “Woah! You’re looking suave, son,” he said. I saw that he’d shaved off the stubble he’d sported the night before, and was dressed in his workout clothes.

  “You going to the gym?” I said.

  “Jogging,” he said. “Just started. We’re not using the gym anymore.” Translation: we can’t afford the gym anymore.

  “That’s great,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said, and I wished I hadn’t said anything, because he looked embarrassed, which wasn’t usual for him. “Your mother told me about your big interview. There’s more oatmeal on the stove and there’s sliced fruit in that bowl.”

  Dad hadn’t made me breakfast since I was thirteen years old, when I started insisting that I was too old to have breakfast prepared for me and switched to grabbing some toast on my way out the door. I realized he must have gotten up early just to make sure that I went off to Joe’s office with a full tummy. It made me want to hug him, but something held me back, like acknowledging what a big deal this was would have spoiled the illusion of normalcy.

  * * *

  I hadn’t seen 8 A.M. in the Mission since I dropped out of school. I stopped in at the Turk’s for a lethally strong pour-over and let him fuss over me when I told him I was going in for a job interview. The Mission’s always been a place with a lot of homelessness, but it seemed like things were worse than they’d ever been. At least, I couldn’t remember seeing quite so many people sleeping on the edge of the sidewalk or in the doorways of boarded-up stores. I couldn’t remember smelling quite so much pungent human pee-stink from the curbs.

  I finished my coffee just as I reached Joseph Noss’s campaign headquarters, between 22nd and 23rd on Mission, in a storefront that had been a huge discount furniture place for most of my life, but which had shut down the year before and had been sitting empty until now.

  The big windows were plastered with orange and brown NOSS FOR STATE SENATE signs, neither Democrat blue nor Republican red. I checked my phone: 8:20. I was early. I tried the door, but it was locked. I rapped on the glass and peered in, trying to see if there was anyone inside. It was dark, and no one answered. I knocked again. Nothing. Oh, well. I stood by the door and waited for Flor Prentice Y Diaz, trying to project an air of employability.

  She arrived at exactly 8:29, wearing blue jeans, a nice blouse, and a kerchief over her hair, and carrying a takeout cup from the Turk’s. She had a serious, almost angry face on as she walked down the street, like there was a lot on her mind, but when she saw me, she smiled, then frowned as she took in my battered face. “Marcus?” she said.

  I smiled back and extended my hand. “Hi there! Sorry about this—” I scrunched up my face. “I was at Burning Man last weekend and, well, a car exploded at me. It looks a lot worse than it is, really.”

  She shook my hand. Her grip was gentle, dry and warm. “I heard about that,” she said. “Are you sure you’re okay to be here? If you want to reschedule—”

  I waved my hands. “No, no! Honestly, I’m fine. Besides, Joe—Mr. Noss—said that he was in a hurry, right?”

  “Well, that’s very true. All right then, let’s get inside, shall we?”

  She dug a big key ring out of her handbag and opened the doors, reaching out with one hand to hit a light switch. The fluorescents flickered on all around the cavernous space, revealing trestle-table desks with snarls of power strips beneath them. There were still signs advertising cheap sofas on some of the walls, and a long checkout counter that was now covered with silk-screening stuff. Someone had installed a big extractor fan over the table, but I could still smell the paint-y smell o
f the silk-screening station. Clotheslines hanging from the stained old drop ceiling were draped with shirts and posters in the campaign’s orange and brown.

  “This is where the magic happens,” she said, crossing to a desk right in the middle of the floor. It had more papers on it than most, and a big external monitor. She slid a laptop out of her purse and connected its power cable and monitor cable and woke it up and entered her password. I politely looked away as she typed it, but I could hear that it was admirably long and complex—there was also the telltale sound of a shift key being depressed and several of those unmistakable spacebar bangs.

  “Sounds like a good password,” I said.

  “Oh yes,” she said. “Ever since I had my Yahoo mail compromised a few years ago and everyone I knew got an email saying I was stranded in London after being mugged and asking for them to wire money to help me out. I expect you’ve got your own little security rituals, right?”

  I nodded. “Just a few. But as soon as you start looking into security, you discover that there’s always more you could be doing.”

  She was staring intently at her screen as her email streamed in. I noticed she wasn’t breathing, which was something I’d read about: email apnea. People unconsciously hold their breath when they’re looking at their inboxes. I made a mental note to mention it to her later if I got the job.

  “I like your taste in coffee,” I said, as she slumped back and gasped for air. “The Turk is awesome.”

  “He’s one of a kind,” she said, sipping. She’d pulled some papers from her purse. I recognized my résumé. She tapped my address. “You live pretty close to here, huh?”

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “I went to Chavez High, just up the street.”

  “I sent my kids there, too. But that would have been before your time.”

  I was feeling good about the interview. We were bonding. We had all this stuff in common—Chavez High, the Turk … We hadn’t even talked about Barbara Stratford.

  She set the résumé down on her desk. “You seem like a very nice person, Marcus.” Suddenly, I was a lot less confident. Her expression had turned into a professional mask. “But you don’t exactly have a lot of work experience, do you?”