“He has a mother, sisters…”
Tomas tugged his right earlobe and shook her roughly. You deaf?
Zelda stumbled on numb feet into the cold night without a jacket, just a thin red scarf she’d been using as a cleaning rag. She munched on the last of the Della’s Super Crunchy Chocolate Chip Cookies, pieces toppling out of her pocket like a trail leading down Jerome Avenue. She frowned at the midnight crowd, noisy, clamoring siblings hopping up and down as if the ground were too hot to stand on.
Zelda clung to the rear of the crowd as the barking neared. Confident pugs marched across the wide avenue, their perked ears waving back, flared snouts sniffing happily. At the midnight whistle, children ran forward, hugging pugs, rolling on the ground, feeding them treats, throwing balls; who was happier was hard to tell.
A fawn pug raced in circles near Zelda. She scooped up the squirming dog, kissing its cool fur. A couple children flanked her, gesturing to let the pug down so they could play. Ugly children, Zelda thought. Sneering ugly children tugging on her jeans. Zelda tightened her arms around the pug and the children complained to their parents. Sneering ugly stupid parents all happy with ugly children outside at midnight trying to steal one more thing from her.
She ran through the crowd with the pug, who settled down, enjoying the ride and the air fluttering on its face. People shouted and pointed. Zelda made it as far as one block, telling the pug not to worry, she knew shortcuts, this was her neighborhood, she grew up there, Puppy grew up there, Pablo grew up there, Mooshie grew up there, her dead boyfriend grew up there.
The Blue Shirt gently held her arm; this was not the first time someone tried running off with a pug.
“C’mon, ma’am, give me the doggie.”
She kicked his shin and managed another half a block before she was surrounded by three stern Blue Shirts. Zelda flailed helplessly at the air, leaping from one foot to the next as the pug climbed onto her shoulder, barking. “He’s mine. Please, he’s mine.”
The Blue Shirts carefully took the pug. Zelda held onto the old black metal light pole, beyond crying, just needing something to hug. She abruptly grabbed one of the Blue Shirts, who kindly patted her back. She never knew loneliness could hurt so much. Maybe because she’d gotten so used to it.
• • • •
THE NAMES OF each of the players were written neatly on the top of the boxes stacked in the center of the clubhouse; Frecklie had checked four times to make sure they had the right names with the right sizes.
Mick was the first to snatch a box, a wide grin traveling in a semi-circle around his head.
“They moved Christmas to the summer, too?”
“You could say that.”
Mantle grunted and sat in front of his locker. Slowly the rest of the team searched for their names, quietly unwrapping. Vern was the first to cry out.
“Look at this.” He danced around the clubhouse with the pinstripe top. “Number eight?”
Puppy smiled. “Also worn by Yogi Berra and Bill Dickey, two of the greatest Yankee catchers of them all.”
Players shouted out their numbers as if they’d won a contest: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10.
The owner of number 7 was very quiet, turning the uniform over and over again.
“What do you think, Mick?” Puppy sat beside him.
Mantle shook his head back and forth in disbelief. “Never thought I’d wear it again.”
“Life’s amazing, especially when you throw in death.”
Mick smiled that illuminating boyish smile. “I got another chance.”
“You ain’t screwed it up yet.”
“Leading the fucking team in homers,” he grumbled.
“And RBIs.” Puppy clasped his shoulder. “Go on, see if it fits.”
“Why wouldn’t it?” Mickey spent a few minutes sucking in his stomach to loop the black belt.
Ty stomped out of his locker in his Yankee pinstripes, dampening the enthusiasm of the room. “Whose goddamn idea was this? Oh wait, I hear a voice. Could it have been my star pitcher who thinks his crap melts in your mouth because he struck out ten worthless pieces of shit last time?”
“Yes, skip.”
Cobb pressed his nose into Puppy’s throat. “You gave me a Yankee uniform?”
“Yes, skip. ‘Cause we are the Yankees again.”
Mickey pounded his bat against the locker and the team whooped it up. Ty cut out their tongues with a glare, returning to Puppy.
“I hated the fucking Yankees.”
“I know. Success breeds envy.”
Mickey snickered.
“I don’t want to be a Yankee. I want to be a Tiger. That was my team.”
Puppy leaned forward. “Maybe someday they’ll come back.”
“Yeah, along with banks and white people.” Ty scowled around the clubhouse. “And what about this number?”
“Thirty-seven. Casey Stengel. Great Yankee manager.”
“I know who he was and that clown couldn’t hold a candle to Joe McCarthy.” Ty fingered the sleeve. “Is this real cotton?”
“As close as we’ll get.”
Cobb grunted at the silent, anxious team. “Are you all happy with your little stripes and numbers like you’re in a fucking prison?”
They all nodded happily about their little stripes and numbers.
“Then say some thanks, you goddamn heathens. Down.”
Ty knelt and the team eagerly followed, clasping their hands and closing their eyes. Puppy suddenly realized they’d been praying regularly.
“Lord Jesus, thank you for these uniforms even if Puppy Nedick thinks he did it. We appreciate what you’ve done working with what you got, which ain’t much. We ask you to help us out and make us,” Ty paused, pained by his own prayers, “make us worthy to wear these uniforms of real major leaguers. Amen.”
The team mumbled amens.
“All right, assholes.” Cobb kicked over a stool. “Show me what you got.”
As the players headed toward the dugout, they mouthed thanks to Puppy.
Batting practice wasn’t much since the two teams spent most of the time examining each other’s uniforms, the Cubs nee Falcons proudly showing off their navy blue colors. Ty angrily separated the teams, though every time he turned away, he smiled like a four-year-old swimming in a bowl of chocolate pudding.
Since Lydia was pitching today, Puppy wandered down to the bullpen to loosen up his stiff arm. Frecklie waited with a catcher’s mitt by the back row of skeletons.
“Can’t we ever move them?”
“Not yet.” Puppy said, soft tossing. He jerked his head toward the stands. “How’s Miss Cuddly?”
Frecklie sighed. “She told me she’d slice off my testicles if I bothered her.”
“I love the tender mating rituals of young lovers.”
“She’s really sweet, Puppy. Except when stressed.”
“I have faith in your judgment, kid.”
The boy blushed. “Thank you. That means a lot.”
Puppy twirled around to show off Mooshie’s number 88 on his back. “Thanks for getting Beth to do this.”
“She wants me to be happy, sometimes.”
“Your Mom’s talented.”
The boy frowned again, figuring out the notion of being proud of his mother. Frecklie squatted behind home plate and Puppy threw ten pitches, none of them close to the strike zone, all of them producing a wince.
Puppy slipped off his glove. “Maybe that’s it for now.”
Frecklie walked back. “How much does it hurt?”
“I just pitched a couple days ago. Probably should’ve rested…”
“Muscles should be stretched,” Frecklie interrupted. “Not be in pain.”
“You’re a doctor now?”
“No, but my great-grandma is.” He paused. “Didn’t she help?”
Puppy’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not supposed to know about that. It’s dangerous.”
“So’s everything we seem to do.”
&
nbsp; Puppy couldn’t argue that. He stared at the new second level, adverts for Hal’s Healthy Hot Dogs and Munchkin’s Golden Ale flanking the Basil Hayden’s Funeral Home sign on the first base side. Work continued on the upper level, jackhammers singing. Just a few more days.
“When are you going back to my great-grandma?” Frecklie persisted.
“It was only a one-time visit.”
“You can’t do acupuncture that way.”
“You can if you’ll go to jail.”
Frecklie’s anger grew. “Who said just once?”
“I did.”
Frecklie threw down the catcher’s mitt. Puppy sighed. “Your Mom. I appreciated even that much.”
“She did it for me.”
“I figured. Be thankful you have someone who loves you that much.”
Frecklie’s eyes suggested he could do very well without such love. “You’re going back to my great-grandma until your arm’s better.”
Puppy traced circles in the dirt; he didn’t know why, maybe it was the simple closure of it all. “And lie to your mother?”
He snorted. “I do it all the time.”
An HG demon soared overhead, severing Puppy’s pulse for a moment. The demon swirled, firing exploding baseballs in all directions as the early arriving crowd, around twenty thousand, cheered wildly.
Puppy and Frecklie gingerly stepped into the outfield for a better look.
Hissing on its hooved hind legs, the demon cackled; Frecklie smiled, recognizing one of Dale’s crazy late night voices. A dog in a Yankee uniform trotted over and sniffed disdainfully, growling; the howling demon fired more fiery baseballs.
The Yankee dog ducked and grew bigger and bigger, barking loudly, deafeningly, joined by the fans. The demon covered its ears. The Yankee dog threw its own baseball which smashed into the demon; the incinerated remains flew all over the field.
The dog puffed its chest and became Puppy with canine features.
“Do I look like that?” Puppy cringed.
Frecklie nodded.
WELCOME TO OUR HOUSE dangled in the air. The crowd roared as the show ended. In the control room on the second deck, Dale took bows, blonde curls flapping in all directions.
“You’re going to marry her, aren’t you?” Puppy asked.
“Sure.” Frecklie’s eyes glistened.
He gave the boy a long look. Hey, friends tried talking you out of Annette, too. But none are so blind as those who get sex regularly.
• • • •
THE IMPERIOUS A8 librarian bulged its round metal eyes and returned Pablo’s Lifecard. “This does not say you are a Cousin in training.”
“It says I’m being considered.”
The ‘bot shook its head. “Considered, is not is.”
“I already have a mentor.”
“In waiting.”
“Do I look like the type of person who fails?”
The robot wanted to answer all humans are failures, but carefully shrugged. “I can only give you access to which you’re entitled.”
Pablo followed the A8 down a long silver corridor into a small airless room, where he was set up on a laptop. The robot signed him in and stepped back.
“You’re limited to dentistry through the ages and attendant themes such as health and nutrition.” The sneer was difficult to miss as the ‘bot waved the synced pass card for Pablo’s clearance and quietly closed the door.
Pablo set out his notebook with two pens and three pencils, wondering where the cameras were as he slipped off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. He ignored the beeping patient calendar reminding him that Maxine Duong was scheduled for an eleven AM check-up and put the lucky marble near the pens, searching the year by year list of new restaurants in the Bronx since 2030, finally locating Needleman’s; there’d been no new restaurants since 2085. Wanting to protect the existing restaurants, overwhelmingly family-run, Grandma made opening new ones especially difficult.
Clicking on the link took him to a dully colored page, Needleman’s. Food You Know. Established 2036. The waiter was right about that. Pablo scrolled through the familiar menu. Hot and cold sandwiches. Soups of the day. Desserts. Black and white cookies, of course.
None of this food, in its original form, was available anymore, Pablo thought, looking at a handful of pictures from the gallery. With rare exceptions, farming had turned to genetically engineered foods. How did you make genetically engineered pastrami, he wondered. He shrugged, figuring you could if you could, but something didn’t sit quite right.
The bakery, for instance, where they got the “mouth-watering” rugelach, whatever that was, was in Manhattan. Maybe bakeries had returned to downtown New York. He cross-checked and didn’t find any new bakeries in Manhattan since just before the attack in 2072. Maybe this bakery had somehow survived. By transporting mouth-watering rugelach every day through Manhattan to the Bronx when few people ever crossed the border?
Frowning, Pablo rolled the marble around his palm. And the knishes. Also from Manhattan. He checked Yonah Shimmel. Closed. He grunted. Hard to get the best knishes in the world from a place which didn’t exist anymore.
He leaned back, thinking, then clicked on Who Are We. Needleman’s Inc., 2034, but there wasn’t a link. Pablo finished making notes and waited for the A8 to return.
“Find what you wanted?” The A8 leaned over to sign him out.
“Almost.” Pablo could feel the robot shuddering at the rare touch of a human hand on its body. Not quite forbidden, but there better be a damn good excuse for a human manhandling a robot. Pablo slowly withdrew his fingers from the ‘bot’s wrist. “I need to look up a business.”
“If it’s within your clearance.”
“It’s a restaurant, nutrition for The Family.”
Pablo turned up his hands innocently and gave the robot the name. He stood in the corner while the A8 checked. The ‘bot returned, disappointed; it preferred to be helpful. Unlike humans, it needed a purpose.
“That’s coded.”
“Sorry?”
“The original business license is security coded.”
“But it’s just a deli.”
“Since it’s security-coded, I can’t explain that.”
Pablo smiled disarmingly. “You’re so knowledgeable. There must be only finite reasons for a restaurant being coded.”
The A8’s eyes revolved; the human was in need of assistance. “Theoretically, either the contents or the personnel would require security clearance.”
“In your estimation,” Pablo bowed respectfully, “would deli food fall under that category?”
“Unlikely since this was before the extensive crop damage beginning in 2061.”
“So it’d be the personnel. Were any of the workers Jew refugees requiring special attention?”
“The workers are all native born.”
Pablo frowned. “Your thoughts and insights then? Purely theoretically, of course.”
The ‘bot’s eyes settled squarely on Pablo. “Theoretically, the workers might not be human.”
“What would they be?”
If the ‘bot were allowed to have a face, it would be sketched with pity at this inferior lifeform. “They could be part of the early A1 class. Theoretically, of course.”
• • • •
AZHAR PRODDED THE burning sock with a stick. Each night since coming home, he’d torched another piece of clothing from the bag hidden behind the washer in the basement, innocently adding them to the trash fire in the backyard. The black socks were the last; he was so intent watching the smoke curl around the dancing embers that he didn’t hear the shouts from the house.
Still holding the blackened stick, Azhar rushed in through the kitchen as Omar shoved past the white-faced Jalak up the staircase.
“You can’t leave,” she yelled.
They glared at Azhar, approaching in bewilderment.
“What’s going on?” he asked hoarsely
Omar fled into his room while Jalak slammed
their bedroom door in Mustafa’s face.
“What’s going on?” His loud knocks were answered by crashing glass and Jalak’s wailing moans and prayers.
His sons’ room was filled ceiling to floor with religious artifacts, quotations from the Quran, three crescent moon and star flags and the ubiquitous five-foot high Fazat Allah victory poster of the Grand Mufti, crushing the map of Europe beneath his foot. In the corner, Abdul huddled on his bed as if an overnight guest, a few color photos of Club Madrid football star Said Abdella taped over his pillow.
From his bed, Omar stared at Mustafa with pure hatred; he thought of Clary, as if he ever stopped.
“Talk,” Azhar said sternly.
Omar turned away in disgust. Azhar gestured for Abdul to wait outside. The boy shook his head, glaring at his brother.
Finally Azhar stepped toward Omar. “I said talk.”
The boy clenched his arms around his knees, scowling. “It is the Holy Warriors.”
“Isn’t it always?”
He sneered. “I have been ordered to live at the Martyrs Home.”
“Why?”
The sneer twisted deeper. “Why else? To continue my education.”
“Is that common?”
“No,” Abdul called out. Azhar silenced him with a look.
“Is that true?” Mustafa turned back to the eldest boy.
“In certain cases,” Omar said slowly, carefully gathering his words as if reading off a prepared page. “In certain cases, where the student’s home is not suitable.”
Azhar blanched. “Are those bastards saying your parents…”
“Parent.” Omar stood. “Mother is a faithful woman. You are not suitable, Father. I will be infected with your weakness and heresy. I cannot open my heart and mind to Allah while living here. Your sins are many.”
“Sins? I’ve always obeyed Allah.”
The boy’s face curled in disdain. “I leave in the morning.”
“The hell you do. I don’t permit it. Do you hear me?” he thundered.
Omar frowned, genuinely puzzled. “That is not your decision anymore.”
Azhar shook him roughly, hoping the madness would fly out of Omar’s ears, lips, head, ass, crawl out from beneath his toenails. But the boy kept shaking his head with smug pity.
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