Emporium

by Adam Johnson

  “That French is phat,” I say. “Bet the lady friends go for that smooth talk.”

  That’s when ROMS rolls up. ROMS sniffs us, then lifts a claw in greeting.

  “Yo, holmses,” he says, which is something I taught him. ROMS is the only one around here who’s geekier than me, and he’s a bomb detection and disposal robot. He’s got some basic hostage negotiating programming, so I’ve been trying to teach him to talk cooler.

  “Hey, ROMS,” I say. “The posse and me was thinking about grabbing some chow. Wanna chill with us?”

  “Let’s eat and make friends,” he announces. “Food is the first step in peaceful resolutions. Pizza, burger, baba ghanoush.”

  “Shit,” Twan says and just walks away.

  “Maybe another time, sir,” Cedric says, and Henry looks like he wants to bust a stitch something’s so funny.

  “It’s a date,” ROMS says to them as they walk away.

  ROMS is clueless to how the guys are always avoiding him, and I try to shield him from that. You see, ROMS and I are both Cancers, which means we’re sensitive and a little moody, but with a lot to say. For his birthday in July, I’m planning on getting him an update—Negotiator 5.0, with the latest Black English Converters—because ROMS wants to express himself, but he just doesn’t have the programming.

  For now, ROMS and I decide to eat lunch without those guys. I have a learner’s permit, but there has to be someone in the car with me, and technically, ROMS doesn’t count, so we walk across the street to grab a Sony burger.

  Generally, people don’t like to see a bomb robot enter the building, so ROMS and I use the drive-thru, which is a little humiliating. The ugly truth is, though, robots are way looked down upon in our society. Just because some people are different doesn’t mean they’re not the same as you or me. That’s why, when we’re working at a playground or day care, I tie a “Barney” mask on ROMS’s display panel—purple and humorous, it helps ensure the next generation won’t have to live in fear.

  I order a double Sony dog with a large Nix. For ROMS, I get a water, no ice—you have to wet his sponge reservoir every once in a while to keep his sniffer from drying out.

  The girl at the drive-thru’s kind of cute. She’s about my age, with some skin trouble, though I like the cock of her headset. When it’s our turn in line, I can’t think of anything to say, but she’s the one who speaks first.

  “Nice rifle,” she says when she hands me the bag.

  I want to make my move, but ROMS won’t quit sniffing her, and he’s ruining everything! I kick him on the sly. When I do open my mouth, all that comes out is “extra ketchup.” Then I go and add, “s’il vous plaît.”

  She shakes her head and hands me two packets, like there’s a ketchup shortage or something.

  The car behind us starts honking, so ROMS and I move along.

  The only place to eat outside is the kiddie area, so I sit in a dinky seat, and ROMS parks on the rumpus pad. The play area’s really just a giant food recycler dressed up to look like a jungle gym, and the thing’s loud as heck. I look past the little rope that’s supposed to keep kids out of the heavy gears, but I don’t see a muffler on the thing, a total code violation.

  I sift through the fries for my instant game card, while ROMS pulls out a really long straw. I get excited when I scratch off a bikini and then a martini, but it turns out I’m one machete short of winning the trip to Haiti with the Sony Girls.

  I throw the game card on the ground. What’s the use, anyway?

  ROMS can see my disappointment. “Why the long face?” he asks

  “Thanks, ROMS, but I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “We can resolve this crisis together. We’re friends. First let’s start with some small talk. What do you think of the Raiders this year?”

  That puts a smile on my face. ROMS is my friend. Some bomb robots, every time you turn them on, you’re a new person to them. You have to reintroduce yourself and everything. But ROMS is different. We’re like a team—both of us dedicated to saving people, though I do it indirectly, of course.

  “Okay,” I say. “Tell me this—you ever find a bomb, and when you touch it, you get a feel for the person who made it, like, who they really are, and suddenly you’re connected to them?”

  “All the time,” ROMS says, though it’s a little hard to hear him over the gnashing blades of the recycler. “I’m versed in the signature detonation devices of most major terrorists.”

  “No, man. I mean, like, see their soul.”

  ROMS slurps. “Is this about the Sony Girls?” he asks.

  “Don’t even talk about girls. This problem is way different. Say I’m about to resolve a crisis, okay? I go to pull the trigger, and I get this weird sense of connection with the target, like we’re old homies. But then, as soon as I shoot them, that closeness goes away, and I’m left feeling sort of mechanical.”

  “I know where you’re coming from. I’ve been there.”

  “Really?”

  “I love you, man,” ROMS says.

  I chew a mouthful of hot dog, and looking at ROMS, wash it down with Nix. Because of his hostage skills, he always has something good to say when you’re down, but this surprises me. This is not in his programming.

  “Are you feeling okay?” I ask ROMS.

  “Love makes the world go round,” he says and sniffles.

  I reach out, and his instrument shield is cool to the touch. When I check his power light, it’s flashing. He gets pretty emotional when his batteries are low, and his bomb sniffer resets to default, so that it sounds like he’s sniveling, like he’s about to cry.

  “Can’t we all just get along?” he asks me, his voice slow and slurred.

  Poor guy. I use my scope to call Maintenance to come pick him up.

  “Hugs,” ROMS mutters before all five of his arms droop, and he finally goes out.

  * * *

  In the afternoon, there’s a brief rampage at Oracle and then a standoff at an upstart called crepes.com, but tactical ends up handling it. It turns out that a crepe is a sort of pancake, except you roll it up like a breakfast burrito. I don’t get to try one, though. All those bulls on SWAT snarf them down. Online crepe sales must be good, though—the parking lot’s solid BMW.

  The last shot of the day is a disgruntled so-and-so at Sun Microsystems, and as the news choppers begin to circle overhead, my heart stops for the longest time ever. I can’t even tell if I stopped it or if it just shut down on its own. I’ve never been hooked up to a monitor or anything, but you can feel your chest tighten and know when something’s not working, so this is not in my head, like Lt. Kim says. Above, the hovering reporters are already trying to hack into my scope’s video feed for the evening news, and all I can do is sit on a gray, stinky roof, feeling nothing.

  After work, Gupta and I ride the CalTrain to his gym.

  Lt. Kim says one of the keys to being a healthy sniper is not taking your job home with you, so I agreed to find a way to unwind after work. That’s when Gupta invited me to join him a couple nights a week for a little Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

  At rush hour, the train is packed. Most of the people are just guys hunched over their Porn Pilots, though there’s a couple tough-looking characters, too. I don’t get worried. Even though I only weigh 110 pounds, people don’t mess with me. They see my rifle and know I’m a peace officer, that I’m here to help.

  The Transit Authority painted yellow happy faces on the fronts of their trains to discourage all these suicides, and as a northbound commuter races past in a smiley blur, it makes me wonder if Lt. Kim doesn’t have it all wrong. Maybe when you put a good image over a bad one, it’s the bad that wins out. I wonder if the happy face helps the guy driving the train.

  I ask Gupta, “Hey, who’s Cherry Garcia?”

  “Ah, this is Ben and Jerry,” he says. “A very fine flavor of ice cream. Every bite is cherries.”

  I think of cherry blossoms, see their peeling pink bursts.

 
“Well, at least all those hostages made it safely out of HP.”

  “It was data he was holding hostage,” Gupta says. “He threatened to erase all of HP’s bar codes. Talk about bringing a company to its knees.”

  “So no one was in danger?”

  Gupta shakes his head.

  “What were his demands?”

  “He wanted a magic carpet ride back to Karachi.”

  We shake our heads over the tragedy of this, over the needless waste.

  “Why not just jump on a plane, then?” I ask

  “Why not just jump in front of a train?” Gupta says.

  “He really said ‘magic carpet ride’?”

  Gupta shrugs. Beyond him in the window, California bungalows flash their pastel backs at us. “I don’t know about exact words,” he says. “This is a popular saying.”

  When we get to the jiu-jitsu gym, there’s a beautiful girl waiting for Gupta. She’s about sixteen, bay-leaf skin against the blue of the mat, warming up with knee twirls and neck bridges.

  “What a daughter,” Gupta says to me. “Why couldn’t she stick with debate? Keep your distance from this one,” he adds, but I can’t tell if he thinks I’d be trouble for her, or the other way around.

  When she comes over, she’s still loosening up her arms.

  “Nice rifle,” she says. “Rhodesian?”

  She talks a little funny because of her mouthguard.

  “South African,” I answer. “It’s an early model Kruger.”

  “Didn’t the UN ban those?”

  I shrug. “Technically.”

  She lifts her eyebrows, impressed. “I’m Seema,” she says. “Wanna spar?”

  “Okay,” I tell her, even though she’s got ten pounds on me and “Mission: Submission” is embroidered on her gi.

  We start to circle each other, with Seema faking a couple lazy leg chops. Her ankles, when they flash from her gi, are strong and cut.

  Jiu-jitsu is based on the notion that people need distance to hurt you. Instead of keeping away, you pull your opponent closer, so that your bodies are touching, so their arms and legs are too close to strike. Then you have to learn to feel at home in the grasp of a stranger.

  Seema rushes me, clinches, and sweeps a leg. On the ground, I endure a couple ankle cranks. I roll out of a double heel hook, then surprise her with a wrist crucifix.

  That gets her attention. “You new here?” I ask.

  Seema’s keylocks are savage, and she keeps a constant knee in my kidneys.

  “I beat all the guys at my old dojo,” she says, “so here I am.”

  From behind her hot pink mouthguard, she flashes me a wicked smile.

  Her legs are around my hips, feet interlocked, and when I try to pass her guard, I almost eat a triangle choke. Even though she’s wearing a full gi, her ta-tas are right there. I’ve never grappled with a girl before, and I’ll admit I’m concentrating on not farting or anything.

  “You’re the Blackbird, aren’t you?” she asks, sneaking her legs up to my shoulders so she can set an arm bar.

  “My real name’s Tim.” I block her arm attempt, but the distraction suckers me into a side-mount, and before I know it, I’m breathing some serious shoulder blade. Suddenly, I’ve got gi burns on my face. This girl is wriggly.

  “So, do you shoot women?” she asks.

  This question is probably just a distraction so she can reverse me. I entangle an arm and work an elbow lock. She winces enough that I know the joint is getting pretty hot. “Justice is blind,” I tell her.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  I don’t really have an answer for this. It’s just what they taught us at the Academy. Under me, I can feel her ribs undulate as she breathes, the graceful arc of her sternum, and to answer her question, my mind’s drifting back to an old sniper ethics course, when Wham—she flips me with an elevator.

  “I’d shoot a woman,” Seema says. “If she was asking for it.”

  “Really?”

  She sets her hooks, improves position, and then Bang—rear naked choke.

  “That was a joke,” she says, knowing I can’t talk anymore. To really sink the choke, she arches her back, which makes my vision go sparkly. Then she gives me a little lecture. “You know, in Switzerland, you need a court order to shoot a woman, and in Brazil, they teach women jiu-jitsu, so there’s way less violence.”

  I can’t tell if her dark hair has fallen in my face or if the lights have gone out. All I know is I feel relaxed all over and warm, the opposite of when your heart stops and your blood’s just loitering. I picture Brazil as a green country filled with colorful talking birds and mangos maybe, where beautiful women walk around in white gis, and whenever one person tries to hurt another person, a woman appears and pulls you down, wraps her arms around you.

  * * *

  The next morning, I cruise the hallways looking for Gupta so I can gather some intel about Seema. I check the whole police station, practically—the lockdown, motor pool, all the tanning beds—before I see the red light flashing outside the interrogation room.

  Through the one-way mirror, I see Gupta doing an interrogation: a “suspect” is blindfolded and strapped—for his own safety—to a reclining medical table next to the truth machine. What I can’t believe is that behind Gupta, at the toolbench, is Seema. She’s wearing a crisp labcoat, hair up in a little bun, and she’s stripping wire with a set of black cutters, trying to make clean connections for the electrodes.

  The interrogation room kind of gives me the willies. Not that I’m against the judicious use of electricity, in the name of Protection and Service; it’s just there’s something a little claustrophobic about the place. I admit Lt. Kim’s done wonders with the decor, throwing in a few plants and inspirational posters—she even invested in a new kind of oral shunt, which not only keeps a “suspect” from biting his or her tongue, but also forces the mouth into the shape of a gentle smile.

  I put on my mirrored sunglasses, and as I open the door, remember to watch my language—all “suspect” conferences are taped on closed-circuit, which means the reporters hack in every once in a while, so we try to keep a lid on the cussing.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask Seema.

  “I’m soldering,” she says when she sees me, “for justice.” She holds up the smoking iron like the Statue of Liberty.

  “No, I mean here, at the police station.”

  “It’s national Take Your Daughter to Work Day,” Seema says, though we can barely hear each other over Gupta’s “suspect.”

  “Oh, right, sure. Hey, I had a great time yesterday.”

  “You hung in there longer than most,” she says, and without a mouthguard, you can see she’s got a chocky set of braces. Wearing her hair up also reveals some cauliflowered ears from grappling. But her eyes are deep brown, rifted with gold.

  Behind us, Gupta’s really going after it. “Where did you stash the dang PIN numbers?” he demands. “And no more of your darn lies.”

  The “suspect” keeps confessing, but it’s lame, and Gupta hates to reward insincerity. Plus, you can barely understand him with that oral shunt.

  “Not so fast this time,” he says, and the grinding buzz of the truth machine starts again. The whole thing unnerves me—you know the sparking zap is coming, followed by a little blue smoke ring and that ozone smell. The suspect’s blindfolded, so he can’t see when the next jolt is coming, and his skin keeps wincing in anticipation.

  Look out, I whisper, feeling a wave of flash empathy coming on, strong enough that the “suspect” begins to resemble a normal person, a neighbor you might know or some guy walking in the park. The LAPD says this is when good cops make mistakes.

  I throw my sunglasses on the bench—they aren’t working at all. I feel a little woozy, and I’d look like a total puss if I fainted in front of Seema.

  “Hey, Gupta,” I call, which makes him stop and smile, surprised to see me.

  “Take five,” Gupta tells the “susp
ect,” then comes over to grab a clean towel.

  “Blackbird,” he says, “what the heck are you doing here?”

  “How about we give the technology a rest,” I tell Gupta. “What say I bring Twan in here so the two of us can play a little ‘good sniper–bad sniper,’ see if that works?”

  “Sorry, Blackbird. This is kind of a father-daughter thing.”

  “As if,” Seema says. “This is so unfair. That guy doesn’t even have a fighting chance.”

  “I’m sure the world would be a better place,” Gupta tells her, “if everyone settled their differences with hand-to-hand. Until then, aren’t you forgetting how angry you got when someone stole your PIN number last year?”

  “At least in jiu-jitsu there’s rules,” she says.

  Gupta sops his forehead and turns to me. “Kids,” he says, shaking his head.

  We follow him back to the silver table, careful to stand on the rubber mat, and looking at that poor fool all strapped down makes me want to amscray out of there. I look at Seema’s large eyes, at the way she bites the tip of a finger, and I get the feeling she’s waging her own battle with empathy. I’ve got some techniques that could help, but it’s something everyone, finally, has to do on their own.

  Gupta adjusts the truth machine’s dial past “candid” and “frank” to “gospel,” the highest setting. Then he tests the new electrodes by swiping them together, and an arcing flash of light leaves us all blinking a moment.

  “That’s not really a truth machine, is it?” Seema asks.

  Gupta throws her a stern look.

  Seema points at the machine’s fancy display panel. “I mean, behind those lights and buttons is some kind of pain machine, right?”

  “Hush now,” Gupta says, lowering the rods, and I can’t tell if he’s speaking to his daughter or the “suspect.” Our eyes follow Gupta’s hands to the man on the table, who lies there flinching. There’s a point in sniping when the bullet’s away, when someone’s fate is sealed. The Kruger bucks in my hands, and for the moment or two it takes the slug to find its home, the target still thinks life is A-okay. They’re so clueless in my scope, so lost, I can’t help whispering, hit the deck. This is the dream I keep having: It’s always a nice day. I’m raking leaves. Sometimes washing my dad’s car. Ghostly, from far away, I hear my own voice call, duck. I don’t scramble for cover in these dreams; instead, I just stand there, holding the hose, searching the roofs and trees for the part of me that’s sure everything’s about to go wrong. This is the voice that Lt. Kim always wants to talk about, the voice in my head that believes anything can end, suddenly and without warning.