A bus came slowly around the corner. It bumped over the curb of the sidewalk. It was painted sky blue with pictures of Savory Circles on the side but passersby shrank against the walls, women with their secondhand briefcases and children going to school and men in carefully polished shoes ducked into doorways, fled down alleyways. The entire crowded street drained away as if somebody had pulled a plug. They knew all the hiding places and boltholes but Nadia did not. As she tried to open the front door of an office building, a door that had been slammed shut in her face, the bus stopped and a Legal Forensics Department agent got out in his uniform of track pants and jacket and a watch cap with F on the front.
Nadia pulled out the little device with the bar and ran it over a nearby wall.
You, he said. He walked over to Nadia.
I’m checking cable, she said. Look, I have a job to do, okay?
The officer took her by the wrist and jerked her toward the bus. It made her cap fly off. They had seized two others along with Nadia and were cramming them all into the narrow door. Nadia fell on the steps and then clawed her way upright by holding on to the belt of a man in front of her. Somebody behind cried out in a strangled sound and clutched the back of Nadia’s shirt. Nadia tore away and fell into a seat. It was dark inside. The guards shouted and bright fractions and splinters of powerful lights fled over their faces.
Wait, said Nadia. Wait, wait, I have a job! I have to report in!
A heavy flashlight struck her across the mouth and she bent over holding her face. A woman sitting beside Nadia was uncontrollably weeping. After an hour of traveling, maybe more, somebody in the back said, This old man’s dead.
Shut up, said the guard.
He’s had a heart attack.
The guard came back without saying anything and jammed the Taser into the woman’s stomach and she shrieked in a high-pitched blast and leaped almost out of her seat.
I said shut up.
Each person in the bus held his or her life closely in two hands as if it were a bird’s egg or a hazelnut, as if it were all of creation and indeed it was, so easily broken within an instant. The smell was terrible. Nadia sat staring straight ahead as the flashlight illuminated one face after another, and then hers, a light so powerful that she was blinded.
Where’s your ID? said the agent.
I lost it. She decided to remain quiet and to show no signs of panic; the guards were on some kind of sadistic trajectory where they needed to kill. Her lips were dry and her hair had fallen in her face. She felt shrunken inside the boy’s shirt. She said in a calm, reasonable voice, Listen, I’m late for work. Look. She held up the device with the gray screen. See?
That’s your job?
Checking cable, finding outages, yes.
The agent stood very close, looming over her and said in a low voice, You got three hundred?
I don’t have that kind of money. Nadia said. Her voice became unintentionally loud and the agent jammed his flashlight against her shoulder.
Tell everybody, why don’t you?
They traveled a long time. They were struck if they tried to talk to one another. From time to time somebody passed out from lack of water and air. The bus lurched along at twenty miles an hour, through noisy, narrow streets and around sharp corners. Sometimes the bus stopped and the guards jumped out and grabbed passersby. There appeared to be no rhyme or reason to the arrests. It was as if they were on a hunting-and-gathering trip.
The guards and the Forensics men scribbled on forms and handed them to those who were conscious.
That’s your arrest sheet! they yelled. Hand them in when we arrive! Any goddamned questions?
There were no questions.
Chapter 24
Keep to the white line, a policeman said. He herded them along with light taps of his club. Nadia stared straight ahead at the policewoman sitting behind the computer screen. One side of her face felt tight and hot as it bloomed into a great bruise.
I have to get out of here, I have to get out of here, the words set off galloping through her head like a film clip of wild horses. How do I get out of here? By being nobody.
But then all her records said she was somebody.
Nadia tried to hear what was being said to the policewoman but hundreds of voices made a wall of noise. Prisoners crept past sweeping and their brooms raised dust clouds. The high ceiling sagged with hanging electrical lines and ripped patches of plaster.
The policewoman behind the computer monitor at the head of Nadia’s line lifted a cup of coffee to her lips without taking her eyes off the screen. After speaking with each woman in turn, she indicated with a quick gesture for her to go to another area. Names were being called. Brown, Margaret! Ortiz, Jane! A good-looking young woman clutching a string bag of market purchases stood shaking in front of the line. She had fine blond hair under a bright flowered head wrap.
The policewoman squinted at her and then said to a guard, Take this one for a screen test. She’s got a good TV face. The policewoman rattled at the keyboard. Try her out for trial and execution.
A guard told the girl, This way. He took her by the arm and led her toward a high, broad doorway where a man in a suit and tie sat behind a desk. Beyond the desk Nadia saw daylight, outside light. The doorway out of this place.
The girl held on to her string bag and cried out that she wanted her arrest on record, weren’t they going to identify her? She had her ID, right here, please. The guard shoved her ahead and the women in the line turned and stared at one another.
Nadia was now standing at the front of the line.
Right hand here, the policewoman said. She tapped a pad beside the screen. Hurry up. Are you deaf, goddammit?
Nadia placed her hand on the gray pad and it was slightly warm as if it were made of flesh. The pad turned green at the bottom edge and then the green color rolled up and under her hand and took her fingerprints.
The policewoman had not taken her eyes off the screen. Huh, she said. Then she shrugged and said, Your name is Sandra . . . no, Sendra Bentley.
Nadia said, That’s correct.
You are employed at the Urban . . . The policewoman paused, and then leaned forward to look at the screen and then began again. The Urban Geospatial Utilization Institute under the Department of Nonutilized Urban Housing.
That’s right, said Nadia. Her bruised face was still and she did not miss a beat.
Research.
Yes.
Research, ah, the Anthem Advisory Council.
Nadia’s heart thudded one great smacking wallop and then quieted. Yes. The Anthem Advisory Council. She licked her dry lips.
Give me your arrest sheet. Nadia handed over the wadded and sweat-stained paper.
The policewoman tapped at the heavy brass keys. She wore small sparkling stones in her ears. Her gray uniform tunic was too tight and her fingernails were bright red and perfect. The nails made little clattering noises on the keyboard. Sendra, Nadia said to herself. Not Sandra, Sendra, Sendra. Become Sendra. You are Sendra.
She heard the hissing vacuum noise as the metal detection doors opened and more people were shoved into the great hall along with flying scraps of food wrappings. The echoing babble sounded like an enormous evil bus station. James had tagged her fingerprints, triggered them to switch names and personal histories.
A guard walked through the area behind the desks and slapped the policewoman on the back and it made her cup jump in her hand and drops of coffee sprang up like bingo chips.
Goddamn it, the policewoman said. Quit that. It’s sprayed all over. The policeman made kissing noises as he walked on. The policewoman muttered as she disabled the keyboard and wiped it off and then plugged it in again.
Research, I am doing urban geospatial utilization research. I can do that. I can make that kind of stuff up. She made herself memorize the words. Urban. Geospatial. Utilization. Somehow Jame
s had reached out to her through the crooked tunnels in what was left of the Internet into Forensics and had deceived the beast.
All right. The policewoman stared at Sendra’s sheet. Looks like they’ve got you down for no permit to leave your sector; no residence registration card; no ID; and unauthorized entry into public buildings scheduled for demolition. You may or may not be charged with all or any of these things.
Nadia nodded. I understand, she said.
No special dietary requirements, medical condition is good, last examination two months ago . . . wait. Your pelvic examination shows some lesions. It’s on the x-ray. You may have to have another pelvic examination and a biopsy.
They never told me that, said Nadia. Now that she was hidden behind another name her mind began to emerge from a suspended state of shock. Now that she, Nadia, was once more not Nadia Stepan. She stood on tiptoe, trying to see the x-ray on the screen. That’s not right. Her voice was cautiously argumentative. She did not want to have a pelvic examination in a jailhouse.
These are lesions. I don’t care if they told you or not. If you feel I am incompetent to read your x-ray you may fill out a form. It is ten pages long and may take up to a month to process. As she said this she groped with her right hand for her package of sunflower seeds.
Nadia stood as high as she could and leaned to one side to look at the screen. Coffee droplets arced across the monitor. The stupid woman was reading them as if they were images on the x-ray. Beneath the dark drops, somebody else’s pelvic bones were stark and white in the pale matrix of flesh, somebody else’s thigh bones lay helpless on the screen. Somebody named Sendra Bentley.
Oh, wait a minute, that’s the damn coffee, the policewoman said in a low tone. She was angry. She glanced up with a haughty stare at the line of women to see if anybody had heard her but the women behind Nadia all looked down or away, sweating, some stained with the blood of others, some with their own. The policewoman wiped the screen with her arm. You are in male attire. Her voice was now sharp and harsh. Do you wish to be sent to the men’s barracks?
Nadia said, No.
The woman clicked on a No box. Do you wish to be issued any prescription medication?
No. Another click on another No box.
Proceed to your left and enter the processing center.
Chapter 25
Nadia was shoved into a great hall full of women; she was made to strip and change into a gray dress, handed straw slippers. The prisoner woman behind the counter found her knapsack and stuffed Nadia’s clothes into it, tagged it, shoved it onto a shelf along with thousands of other bundles.
Then a long confusing march with twenty other recent arrestees through hallways, down stairs, up other stairs, and all the way Nadia counted every step and memorized every turn.
They came to a very large, malodorous room painted a dark gray full of cots, people, and a television screen the size of a Ping-Pong table. Two policewomen sat on chairs outside the door and pressed a button on a small remote as the prisoners were marched through the doorless doorway because there was some kind of photo-cell beam there they had to walk through without triggering an alarm.
This is an assisted living facility! It’s a jail, girls, not a prison! You will remain here under quarantine until we are sure you have no communicable diseases! Then at some time you will be informed of your meeting with your counselor! Your counselor will inform you of your charges and then you will be sent to one of the work farms or solitary confinement or you may have a screen test for television appearances depending on how your offense is categorized! This building is a maze and if you decide to try to run you will not, repeat not, find your way out! You have been given your cot number and sufficient clothing and personal items for reasonable comfort! There is a signal that will activate a siren if you step beyond this door! You have been assigned a cot, find it! Obey the rules!
Their faces were plump and smooth from plentiful water rations. They were all overweight.
Nadia could see out a scraped place in the painted-over windows if she stood on a cot. She could get enough to eat if she fought her way into the line. She would be able to sleep if she jammed wads of unraveled blanket threads into her ears.
A five-foot television screen carried their minds away into other and more pleasant places, and on a table in front were stacks of applications. It was a gray ward and a gray life. The only color was on the television where actors and commentators wore richly toned clothes and moved in spacious interiors. The ward was packed with more than a hundred women, shouting and arguing and pleading for silence to hear the dialogue on One Thin Dime.
Pipes overhead were rusted at the joints and the walls were greasy at head height where women sat on the cots next to the wall and leaned against it. Drying clothing steamed where it drooped from the windowsills. Before it evaporated from her mind Nadia made a map in her head. She shut her eyes against the noise and voices and arguments and gripped the heavy coarse blanket with a hand to each side of herself. She started with the big entry hall. The number of steps. The turns, the stairs. Then here.
Nadia pulled her legs up on cot number thirty-four and wrapped her arms around her knees and wondered which one of these women knew of an escape route, a way out, a guard who could be bribed. She prayed to some divine force that she was not attractive enough to be sent for a screen test. She pulled the blanket over her head and tried to bring up images of Lighthouse Island, of James.
The third morning an older woman came and sat close to Nadia and talked about her orgasms in a low, urgent voice. Her lips were deeply pleated and they worked as she spoke in muscular spasms. She stared intently at Nadia and spoke of her own orgasms, other people’s orgasms, the noise they made in the night.
Get away from me or I will hit you, said Nadia. Get away from me. She wanted to shove the woman off the cot next to her where she sat but somehow she knew the woman would like that. I’ll report you, she said. I’ll report you for abuse.
The woman laughed and then walked away still laughing.
James knew she was here, James would help her, somehow. She had to keep thinking this because otherwise her soul would shrivel. Nadia liked her soul, she believed in it, as she believed in James and his ability to reach her here in the crowded hell of the lowest rung of the world.
The latrines were in a stinking section of the building, twenty commodes in a line. They squirted 50 percent muriatic acid in the rank toilet bowls and inside the tanks and burned themselves. Their skirts looked like they had welding-spark pinholes. Nadia shuffled from toilet stool to toilet stool in the sloppy jail slippers, head down, trying not to bring attention to herself.
They had to look inside the tanks and behind the commodes and turn off the overhead lights and then unscrew the lightbulbs and check around the fixtures for hidden notes or food: prisoner contraband stashes. The guards yelled if Nadia lost one of her loose straw slippers. They hit her and shoved her to the floor. She got back to her feet in a flash before she could be hit again and counted steps and memorized turns. Like everyone else she had bruises on her arms and legs.
She worked alongside a black-haired girl who said her name was Charity, a thin, mean little survivor. Despite a black eye and probably a broken rib or two she clumped along behind Nadia with her jug. Her hair was a frizz of black spiderwebbish tangles. She had feet like pie plates.
Bitches, fat bitches, she said. They drink gallons every day, taking water away from us ordinary people. She said this in a flatlined voice, without stress or intonation. They want the pretty girls for TV. To shoot them. If I had a gun I’d blast them right in their faces.
Shut up. Nadia stepped back from the volatile fumes. You want to get beat up.
Yeah, yeah, Charity snorted and her black hair shook out over her forehead. I get out, I’ll catch one of them in an alley and kick their asses so far up their collarbones they’ll have to take off their shirts to sh
it. Then she said in a oddly pleasant voice, Say, Sendra, would it be okay if I traded cots. I could be next to you and we could look out for each other. There’s criminals here all mixed up with people like me who didn’t do nothing, really. Charity turned to her. Nothing.
Nadia hesitated. Well, okay.
The bruise on Nadia’s cheekbone faded to yellow and her hair turned to dirty red sticks before she found a way to get a comb. One of the women carved them out of wood with a sharpened metal kitchen spoon she kept hidden in her mattress. A comb cost two days’ water but Nadia paid it and shrank inside her gray uniform and during those two days suffered through the dizziness of dehydration. But she managed not to fall, not to lose the jail slippers. She knew if she went down they would beat her unconscious. It seemed to be some kind of custom or rule. She watched the guards, when they changed shift, how they shut off the electric eye when they came in for inspections.
Once a week the prisoners were led into the showers, where the spraying heads hit them with lukewarm jets of great force, lasting, Nadia was warned, exactly three minutes. They handed in their dirty tunics and skirts at the entrance and were handed others going out. They showered in their underwear, scrubbed their underpants and tatty brassieres. The guards made the old woman who talked about orgasms go in last, by herself, and her mouth muscles worked and leaped as if she were speaking to some interior demon.
They cupped their hands and drank the almost undrinkable recycled water. Those who had combs raked tenderly at their wet hair. Nadia held her hands to the water and knew she was inhabited by a constant, subdued rage. It was going to make her sick; it would do something terrible to her. She stood in her soapy underpants and gray brassiere and glanced at Charity through the stinging jets. Charity’s tattoos were not only extensive, mainly composed of magical animals such as unicorns and flying kittens, but beneath her shoulder blades she had instructed the tattooist to include the cost:
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