Parts Per Million

by Julia Stoops

  “So, Deirdre,” says Fetzer, “you’re a long way from home. You heading back there?”

  “Uh, hello?” I say. “Sylvia’s here to tell us about Bluebird, and she’s probably in a hurry.” I sit back down and sip coffee to get the smell of frying chicken embryos out of my head.

  Sylvia looks at her watch, smiles at Deirdre. “I’ve got time.”

  Apparently enough time to listen to Deirdre’s story about how she’s heading home by way of LA, by way of Portland, then one of her bags gets stolen. The one with the plane ticket, money, and camera. I have no idea why this is supposed to be interesting.

  And I need a break from this table. The dishes are piling up out of control and I start running hot water. I’m sort of in Nelson’s way, and I sort of don’t care. Fetzer asks Deirdre about the photos. They’re very good, did she print them herself, yadda yadda. Yes, she did. And what’s she been doing in the US? Waitressing, mostly.

  She babbles on. My hands are red from the water. Makes the freckles disappear.

  Fuck, this is annoying. Wish we did more rad shit like the Maryville action. Christ, if the EFB finds out we let strangers stay, they’ll never ask us again.

  “So, you need a new plane ticket?” Fetzer asks.

  Deirdre says, “Franky said maybe, um, Jen could make me one?”

  I drop a crusty cereal bowl into the water and turn. “Franky said what?”

  “That you’d know how to make a fake plane ticket. You’re a hacker, right?”

  “That idiot. He should so not be telling people shit like that.”

  “Oh, come on,” says Nelson, “it’s Deirdre.” Like we’ve known her for years. He shimmies the eggs onto a plate, sets them in front of Deirdre, and sits down.

  “No!” I say. “We’ve been through this before with modelboy. If his tongue flapping gets me or any of us in trouble, I swear I will crack every database he’s in and erase his existence.”

  Stupid Sylvia is smiling to herself again.

  Fetzer rolls his eyes. “It’s not like it’s a big secret with other people.”

  “You needn’t be worrying, I’m not telling a soul,” Deirdre says.

  “That’s so reassuring,” I say. “I am now at peace.” I wipe my hands on a dish towel and sit down next to Nelson.

  “So you can’t make me a ticket?” says Deirdre. She pierces an egg yolk with her fork and yellow oozes out.

  I grab some toast off the pile in the middle of the table. “Could if I put my mind to it. Transactions get batch-processed in the middle of the night. Avoid the website, crack the backend database. Audit trail happens on the interface side, not the data side. The cracked file’s edits won’t get logged until—”

  “Really?” says Nelson, incredulous. Sylvia’s raised her tightbrows, too.

  I shrug. “Yeah. Probably.”

  Deirdre says, “On second thoughts, it sounds dodgy. I’m not keen on adding a nicked plane ride to me list of confessionable sins.”

  Nerdiculous gives her a lingering glance. Figures. He digs women with principles.

  Damn. Sounded like a decent challenge, too.

  They carry on about ways she could find an under-the-table job, and what about that credit card? Maxed out, of course. And yes, we know she’s an overstayer.

  Finally I get everyone to focus so Sylvia can tell us about the Bluebird timber sale.

  She uncrosses her legs and leans her forearms on the table. “Okay. So, the highest bidder was Glendale Group, right?”

  “Hold up,” I say, and nod in the direction of Deirdre.

  Everyone just looks at me like, WTF?

  “Private conversation?” I say.

  Sylvia gives me a pitying look. “I’m hardly divulging state secrets. So anyhow, Glendale threatened to back out unless the old-growth logging that was included in the original BLM sale got put back in. It turns out Glendale is owned by a holding company—”

  Deirdre puts down her fork. “I need to lie down.” There’s a mess of egg and toast still on her plate. “Sorry. Me eyes were bigger than me stomach.”

  “That’s perfectly fine,” says Nelson. She’s gone pale, and leans her hands on the table to push herself up. The table wobbles and we all have to grab our coffees.

  After she’s back downstairs, I whisper, “See how she reacted?”

  “Jen,” says Fetzer. “An infiltrator would act cool. She’s exhausted, that’s all.”

  “Why? She’s been lying down for days.”

  Fetzer points his fork. “You’re pissing me off.”

  “She obviously needs to stay a little longer,” says Nelson.

  I shake my head. “No way.”

  Fetzer says, “He’s right. She won’t make it out there. She couldn’t fend off a mosquito.”

  Nelson chimes in with, “She’s homeless. And she’s illegal. She could get deported.”

  “So?” I say. “Free trip back to Ireland. Sweet!”

  Sylvia’s shaking her head.

  Fetzer sighs. “You trust the INS to take care of her? She could be detained for years. They’re backlogged with Muslims already.”

  “Oh c’mon. We’re not Amnesty International.” I point to the basement stairs. “Who knows what the hell she’s poking her nose into right now. We’re completely vulnerable.”

  Fetzer rubs a hand over his bald head. “She should stay.”

  “What? You’re acting like this is already decided. Sylvia, tell them this is crazy.”

  Sylvia shrugs. “She seems charming. What’s the problem?”

  Before I know it I’m on my feet. “So I’m the bad guy now? Where’s the goddamn security standards, huh? Flying out the goddamn window soon as a girl with the stomach flu shows up. Fuck this, I’m making an executive decision for the safety of Omnia Mundi. She is out of here.”

  Sylvia looks up at me with her chin in her hand. “If you kick her out and something bad happens to her, you’ll never forgive yourself.”

  Quiet fills the kitchen. Nothing but quiet from downstairs. I head on over to the dishes. The sun’s so bright I have to squint. The water’s tepid now, but the cereal on the bowl has softened and swirls away under the scrubber.

  Goddamn Sylvia’s right, of course. I cannot turn a sister out on the street.

  9: FETZER

  Jen’s concession that morning to let Deirdre stay was a big deal, but we didn’t make a big deal out of it because she’d hate that more. Sylvia gave us the inside dope on some upcoming timber sales, then left to go back to her corporate world. We called Deirdre up to the kitchen. Told her she could stay longer. She gave me a hug but I got out of it quick. Because by then she’d switched from being a sick and sweaty piece of humanity to being a woman: not my type, but I liked the shine on her hair and how her clear olive skin stretched over her cheekbones. Her light brown eyes made me think of tree sap and amber.

  She stood with her hands clasped at her chest, looking like she wanted to put her arms around Nelson, too—I was watching—except that he kept his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the floor. Demons raging as usual, like a kind of white noise. Strange life for a guy like Nelse, living with us weirdos. He needed something warm to wrap his arms around. And I figured she wasn’t staying long, not with that expired visa.

  Jen ignored Deirdre’s huggy vibe and started pulling recording equipment together for our two o’clock. She looked up quick when Nelson suggested we cut Deirdre some keys.

  “She gets keys?” said Jen, and we were off on another round of argument that ended with Deirdre promising “on the Blessed Virgin” that she’d never lend them out.

  Once Jen calmed down, Deirdre asked, “So who’s that Sylvia, anyway?” I told her about Sylvia’s strategic consulting business, how she hobnobbed with executives and fed us tidbits on the side. How it let her believe she was being subversive in a Robin Hood sort of way.

  “She’s no subversive,” said Jen. “She works for the dark side. Besides, most of the stuff she tells us we could research o
urselves. She just saves us some time.”

  And by “research” Jen meant “hack databases.”

  “We appreciate our sources,” said Nelson. “Most people in the mainstream won’t talk to us.”

  And if it weren’t for the fact that Nelson dressed “normal” and spoke well, nobody would’ve talked to us at all. Jen and I liked to snicker at his wardrobe, but we understood its tactical value.

  I invited Deirdre to go with me to get the keys. Poor girl headed across the living room to the front door. I let her pull on the handle, jiggle it. Her frowning face turned to us.

  I said, “Sorry, Deirdre, it’s nailed shut. We have to go out the basement.”

  “But why?” she said.

  “Security,” Jen muttered. “Not that there’s much point anymore.”

  Deirdre ran her fingers down the jamb. “What if there’s a fire?”

  Jen snorted. “You planning on starting one?”

  Nelson sent me a wary look. I sent back a shrug that said, Jen’s just going to have to learn to hang.

  Strange how easy it was to take sides.

  “C’mon,” I said, and Deirdre followed me down to the basement. As we were exiting the one working door, she paused at the threshold and said, “All the world?”

  For a second I didn’t know what she was talking about, then I remembered the sign. ‘Omnia Mundi Media Group’ was on a small plaque by the doorbell. Went by it so often I’d stopped seeing it. “That’s our name, yeah.”

  Her smile was faint. “Seems rather all-inclusive.”

  “Yeah, huh. It was Nelson’s idea. How the hell did you know what it means, anyhow?”

  She looked at me straight on. “I picked up a wee bit of Latin on me way through university, didn’t I.”

  Tucked inside her diary I’d found a piece of burnt foil and a toilet paper tube squashed flat. I took some satisfaction in adding Latin to my mental list of what made her different from that. And hopefully able to escape that.

  She followed me down the narrow cracked path along the side of the house, through the smell of warm earth and mold. The early-summer weeds were already tall, and when I turned around she was grazing her hands across the tops of the stalks and smiling, in love with life.

  “I feel like a snake,” she said, “all fresh and rubbery in a new skin.” She squinted up at the strip of sky between our house and the warehouse next door. “I can smell roses.”

  “Over there,” I said, and pointed at the climbing rose over the front porch. “We neglect it, but it puts out flowers every year.”

  Deirdre went to the rosebush, pulled down a stalk covered in the small pink flowers, and sniffed. “Mmm.” Then she held her arms out in the sun and watched a green leaf-hopper crawl across her wrist. She turned, and her smile melted any residue of doubt. I wanted a breath of fresh air in our stale, cynical household. I wanted her to stay.

  Then she saw the Toro parked on the street and said, “This the car Franky told me about? It looks like an old banger.”

  I put my hand on the warm white paint. “’85 Oldsmobile Toronado,” I said. “Last of the G3. Front-wheel drive. V8 diesel. It was a luxury car back in the day. Converted it to run on biofuel seven years ago. It’s got nearly two hundred thousand miles, but the transmission’s still strong, so it’s got a few more good years.”

  She checked out the interior. “Funny front seat.”

  “Means all three of us can sit up front.”

  “He said you’ve got computers in there?”

  “Ah,” I said, and I unlocked the trunk. There were few things I was more proud of than the work Jen and I had put into that car. “Got the power distribution block and the PC in here. And a dual-battery setup under the hood. The second battery lets us draw power even when the car’s off, without draining the startup battery. Put in a high-output alternator, too.” I pointed to the wires exiting the back of the trunk. “Then we’ve got an inverter to convert it to 120. Then circuit breakers connect to outlets throughout.”

  Deirdre laughed and pointed through one of the windows. “You’ve got wall plugs in there!”

  “Beautiful, huh? The whole thing is plug and play. And check this out.” I opened the passenger door. “Old cars like this? You can mess with the head unit and not screw up the seat belts, brake sensors, and whatnot. This is a whole new one. I distressed it a little so it doesn’t look too slick. But open this up aaaand—satellite radio, CD changer, it’s nice. Then there’s a central console, and look at this—” I opened the fold-out screen on the dash and booted up the system. “It’ll read emails out to you. Plus it’s got a GPS system. Plays DVDs, too.”

  “But how do you get emails?” she asked.

  “Easy. We keep track of networks we know and intercept them as we pass through. And when that doesn’t work—” I pointed to the Ear, which is what we called the Pringles-can Wi-Fi antenna we kept on the back seat.

  She says, “That thing? It looks like a chip can on a tripod.”

  “Looks are deceiving. Aim that right and you can pick up Wi-Fi from miles away.”

  “Jaysus,” she said, her hands pressed to her cheeks. “I have no bleedin’ idea what Wi-Fi is, but it sounds impressive.”

  The sun was getting hot, and our shadows were sharp on the gravel. She looked around, smiling at the windowless warehouses, the pallets stacked up against the building across the street, and our own unused porch with its climbing rose and its missing front step that led up to our nailed-shut front door. The peeling paint, the cracked blinds, and the pieces of tacked-up cloth in the windows. In the distance, there was the beeping of a truck backing up. Deirdre grinned and I grinned too.

  “You people are bleedin’ deadly,” she said.

  10: NELSON

  Nelson stirs his coffee. He isn’t much of a coffee drinker, but he’s been sleeping badly and tea just doesn’t deliver the caffeine he needs right now. Next to him at the kitchen table, Jen is reading on a laptop, and Fetzer’s marking up the newsletter draft. Deirdre’s been gone all afternoon, but that must be her coming up the basement stairs.

  Jen arrived home furious about losing a collection of video editing log notes, and Fetzer’s been grumpy all day. Deirdre’s smile is like sunshine. She steps around the embarrassing coffee table and comes over to the kitchen. She sets a brown paper bag onto the kitchen table and says, “This is for you lot. I got meself a job!”

  “That was fast,” Nelson says.

  Fetzer unrolls the top of the paper bag and peers inside. Smiles for the first time all day.

  “At the diner on the corner,” says Deirdre.

  “Mr. Nguyen’s?” says Nelson. “He’s great. We go there all the time.”

  “So to celebrate,” she says, and with a magician’s flourish she reaches into the bag, pulls out a smeared chocolate donut. “Ta-da!” She takes a white plate from the roll-cart and places the damaged donut in the center. Then she pulls out an apple pastry, and finally a maple donut.

  Fetzer stares at the pastries like they’re wads of money.

  Jen’s mouth hoists into a sneer. “Why’d you bring us this crap?”

  Deirdre’s smile drops. She’s hurt, and Nelson’s neck prickles with anger.

  Fetzer helps himself to the chocolate donut. “It’s free food. Quit complaining.”

  Nelson says, “I think this calls for a glass of wine.”

  Deirdre’s smile returns, slowly, and just for him. “That’ll do nicely,” she says, and suddenly he sees her naked—head back, mouth open, hair across a pillow.

  He turns away. In the top cupboard, upside-down, stands his crystal-cut stemware. The only wedding present he kept. Was allowed to keep. He takes four goblets down and sees the big parties, bright kitchen, halogen lighting, computerized oven. Lise’s gushy guests. He didn’t want any of it; he just wanted the family they were going to have. The goblets are dusty, but he doesn’t want to interrupt the flow of the moment by washing them. He rights each one on the table. “We haven’t fi
nished off that case Mrs. Krepelter donated,” he says, and pulls a bottle of Pinot Noir from the cupboard at the end. He uncorks it—deftly, because Deirdre’s watching—and usually would let it breathe, but not now. The leathery fragrance curls into his nose. The crystal twinkles; the wine is like garnets.

  “Here,” Nelson says to Deirdre, careful to hold the goblet by the stem.

  “Lovely,” she says, and gives the glass a quarter-turn. “Pretty pattern.”

  Nelson scratches his ear. It’s been years since anyone’s noticed his stemware. “Thanks. They’re, uh, Waterford, actually.”

  Deirdre sips and closes her eyes. “Oh, that’s good. Just what I needed.”

  Her eyes open on him with that topaz gaze, and warmth sweeps into his chest. He hands the second glass to Fetzer, who swishes it around, breathes it in, and nods like he’s agreeing to some complicated plan. Jen takes hers and mutters something about wishing it was a cold beer.

  They sit at the kitchen table and the talk turns to telling Deirdre about their monthly broadcast production schedule, the eleven stations they’re syndicated on, how they started with nothing but a newsletter and a mission to disseminate environmental news. Fetzer lifts his glass. “And look at us now!”

  Nelson stares down at his wine. Look at them now. Three misfits and a goofy part-time model with a trust fund who helps out. They left behind direct action to become a media group. The free press is supposed to be the linchpin of democracy, right? But what good is it doing when so few are listening—

  Deirdre winks at him. He wants to reach out and touch her hair where it rests silky and dark across her collarbone. Instead he reaches for the apple pastry.

  They open another bottle, and Jen’s telling them about how her backpack zipper failed as she was cycling across the Hawthorne Bridge and a wad of her video log notes fell out and flew everywhere. Nelson tries not to grin. He hasn’t eaten since breakfast, and the wine is going straight to his head. Coffee, sugar, and wine, breezing through his limbs, tumbling inside his skull.

  Jen burps. Then her mouth twitches into a smilish sort of shape. “Cars were running over them and everything.”