by Julia Stoops
“Twenty-five to thirty!” shouts Fetzer, and he’s half out of his seat and jabbing his finger. “Twenty-fucking-five to fucking thirty!”
Man, he is not often this pissed.
“—but when I listened to their arguments no one seemed to be able to address the complexity of the situation.”
Fetzer slams back into the sofa and yells, “Shit on you.” The screen switches to a young protester. “It’s just wrong to invade a country that hasn’t done anything to you,” she says.
The reporter says, “Others turned up today to voice their support of President Bush’s policies, and to support the efforts of any soldiers who may be called to serve if such action becomes necessary.”
“Fucking cowards,” Fetzer yells. “Couldn’t report a story if it crawled up your fucking assholes.”
“Dude,” I say, “What do you expect?”
Fetzer palms his face. “I dunno. I thought maybe this time it’d be different. There were so goddamn many people!”
Onscreen it’s one of the couple dozen morans we saw, a fifty-ish woman with dyed blond hair. “The president needs to be strong,” she says. She blinks into the sun. “He needs to be resolute in standing up to this bully. And we need to stand behind him as a nation.”
Fetzer mutters, “You ever get the urge to just bomb something, Jen? TV station for instance?”
“All the time, dude, all the time.”
“Not funny,” says Nelson. Him and his middle-class caution. Man, the things I’d do if he wasn’t around.
There’s an edge in Dee’s voice. “If you’d been anywhere near real bombing you’d know it’s really not funny.”
Fetz says, “I know, Dee. Just letting off steam.”
“Hey.” I kick her toe so she looks at me. “Show some respect. Dude was in Vietnam, okay?”
Dee puts a hand over her mouth and looks at Fetz. “Sorry.”
Fetz reaches to pat her knee. “S’okay.”
Girl gets away with anything.
Behind the moran woman on TV a mass of protesters are marching past, and they’re way more interesting. A woman waves her sign, The Corporate Media is Complicit!, and grins. A fat guy in a circle-A jacket flips his finger in the direction of the camera. Makes me smile that the editor never saw them. Bottom-feeder production values.
Franky says, “They sure gave the pro-war lady a lot more airtime.”
I raise my beer to him. “The corporate media, Frank, of which you are a willing, if peripheral participant, has a primary goal of what?”
“Huh?” says Franky. “No, I’m not.”
“Controlling public discourse, Franky. To the point where people think of themselves as consumers rather than citizens. Got that? Consumers. Of Coke and American Idol and Nike and Disney and Nintendo and infotainment.” I nod in the direction of his feet. “And designer boots.”
Franky looks at his boots then frowns at me. “I got to keep these after that magazine shoot. What’s that got to do with Nelson’s speech not being on the news?”
“Consumers are focused on consuming, right? And that distracts them from participating as citizens. And that leaves governments and corporations free to do what they want, because no one’s paying attention. And that’s how they get away with murder.”
“Despite operating in a so-called democracy,” adds Fetzer.
Franky goes back to watching TV. “You’re just jealous.”
“Intelligent critique would get people thinking, and thinking would disrupt the distraction—wait, what?”
Franky crosses his legs and more boot shows. “Admit it, Jen, these boots are awesome.”
“Excuse me?”
Dee says, “Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur.”
“You people are weird,” I say. Time for another beer.
“The world wants to be deceived, so let it be deceived,” she says as I go past.
“Thanks for the downer,” I say, and grab the last Cold Creek Porter.
An ad for a Toyota Landbruiser comes on. The car bucks its way in slo-mo across a pristine southwest landscape.
“You’re right, though,” I say. “The whole fucking world wants to be deceived. Except for the point zero zero zero zero zero one percent that won’t settle.”
52: NELSON
Nelson drizzles more sherry on the mushrooms and stirs with a wooden spoon. Excitement buzzes in his chest.
“Hi,” says Franky. He puts a bag of apples on the counter. “So, what’s the occasion?”
Nelson smiles at the mushrooms. Deirdre says, “It’s a secret. Till we tell.” She’s wearing his favorite sea-green blouse with the ruffles. She looks fantastic.
Franky tosses his keys and catches them. “Can’t wait.” The mushrooms sizzle. They’re such a rich, dark umber.
“You guys need anything?” says Franky. He tosses the keys again, and this time Dee catches them with a squeal.
Like the sound he heard that day behind her door. He had rushed in thinking she was hurt. From her bed, her and Sylvia, their two pairs of eyes, frozen, staring.
Nelson rests the wooden spoon across the pan. It’s over now. He shouldn’t even think about it.
“Know what?” he says. “Let’s splurge.” He pulls a twenty out of his wallet. He almost never spends twenty all at once. “Get some dessert. Something creamy. Tiramisu.”
Franky waves away the money. “Nah, I can get it. But Jen won’t eat that, right?”
“Take it, okay. Get something vegan for her, too.” Franky makes a reluctant face but takes the twenty, and Nelson goes back to stirring.
It’s time to celebrate. He’s applied for the license. They have a date. They’re going to announce it at dinner. And once they’re married, they’ll figure out how to get her on medical insurance. Maybe something through Mr. Nguyen, if she can get enough hours.
“And we’ll have a child,” she had murmured into his chest last night. “An American child.”
No time like the present to start trying, he’d said, and they didn’t use a condom, and just knowing that there could be a spark of new life—
Nelson pauses the wooden spoon. The moment feels huge and wonderful, like all the stars in the sky.
But he should mention to her about cutting back on the drinking.
“So, tiramisu,” says Franky, “and what about a marionberry pie? I know Jen will eat that.”
“Yeah,” says Nelson. “Get a pie.”
“And how about”—Franky does a dance move that ends in a flourish—“ice cream?”
“Brilliant,” says Deirdre, and she giggles. It’s good to hear her giggle. She’s been kind of low lately. But things are getting better. It’ll be so good when they’re married.
Even though it’s happening a little sooner than he expected—when he asked her the day of the big rally, in his mind’s eye their wedding would take place in the spring or even summer. But, like she pointed out, since they know it’s going to happen, why put it off? And after her ambivalence a few months ago, it’s feels good to simply go with the flow.
And once they’re married she can apply for citizenship. Not that he’d expect anyone to want to be a citizen of this insane nation right now, but from a practical point of view, they’ll feel more secure when she’s legal. They need the stability. It will help her, and help him, too. He can be more effective.
The mushrooms are done and he takes the pan off the burner. Deirdre hugs him from behind. “Those look yummy,” she says.
To think he considered leaving all this to be a human shield in Iraq.
53: JEN
Fetzer offers Nancy coffee.
Her blue heels clop across the living room floor. “Sounds good,” she says.
Nelson nudges the coffee table so Nancy can get her large self in there without having to squeeze. He’s such a Nelson, but those social graces come in handy sometimes.
“Cream?” says Fetzer from the kitchen.
The sofa sags under Nancy. “No thank you. But three
sugars, if you don’t mind.”
Nelson sits down next to me on the opposite sofa, elbows on his knees. Nancy’s blue pumps glow like they’re radioactive under the coffee table. She never seems as radical as Fetzer says she used to be. Sure hope I don’t get all conventional when I get older.
She says, “My doc tells me I need to give it up—sugar, that is. I don’t even tell him about the five coffees a day.”
Nelson politely smiles. Fetzer sets the tray on the table. Nelson stares at the four coffees and I know he’s mentally going, Where’s my tea? But Fetzer’s forgotten.
Nancy leans toward the tray. “If you don’t mind my asking, what the hell is that?”
“That?” says Fetzer. He sits next to her. “Sugar.”
Nancy sits back and shakes her head. “No it’s not.”
“It’s Sucanat,” says Nelson. “Unrefined dried cane juice.”
“No offense,” says Nancy, “but it looks like they didn’t sift out the dirt.”
“It’s got less sucrose than white sugar,” I say. “Metabolizes slower. And it isn’t filtered through beef bones.”
Nancy’s wide eyes clamp onto me. “Beef bones?”
“Let’s focus on what we asked Nancy here for,” says Fetzer.
Her fingers curl back and those nails dig in to her pink palms. “You telling me sugar goes through beef bones?”
“Well,” says Nelson, “Strictly speaking, the charcoalized byproducts of animal slaughter.”
Nancy’s fingers splay. “Stop.” Her eyes close and her eyebrows stretch way up on her forehead. “You just did in five seconds what my doc’s been trying to do for five years.”
“Truth,” I say, “may cause side effects in certain individuals.”
Her eyes open and she snorts. “Much obliged, I’m sure.”
“Aaaanyhow,” says Fetzer. “We didn’t ask you over to talk about sugar. We’ve come to a dead end on HLU and Reynolds, and we wanted to run some things by you to get your input.”
Nancy’s eyebrows go up again. “My input.”
“Maybe bounce some ideas off you,” I say.
“Hunh,” says Nancy. “You already bounced me out of the old age I was looking forward to, baking cookies for my grandkids. If you got any more life-changing revelations in that stack of paper of yours, maybe I should come back in a few years’ time. Like when I’m about to die.”
Fetzer rubs his hand over his shiny skull. “You can bake with Sucanat.”
Nancy wrinkles up her nose. “Looks gritty to me.”
“It melts,” he says.
Her mouth curves down. “I’ll take your word for it. So what’s going on?”
Fetzer says, “Well. We’re wondering how things are going with your boss.”
“Still weird.”
“I’m going to cut right to it,” says Nelson. “We suspect Reynolds is blackmailing President Wellesley.”
Nancy digs the spoon into the Sucanat, pauses a second, then drops a heap of it into her coffee. “Holy shit.” She digs the spoon in again. “No denying it, the guy gets whatever he damn well wants from Wellesley, and he gets it on a gold platter.”
“Do you know why?” I say.
She goes in for a third spoonful. “No. But everything he gets comes from Wellesley. No one else gives him the time of day, unless Wellesley says to.” She sits back, cradles the mug. “And now that you mention it, I’ve been hearing things.”
She sips her coffee. Nelson fiddles with a pen.
“Not bad,” says Nancy to her coffee, and I’m thinking, For fuck’s sake, what kind of things?
“Kinda molassesy,” she adds, “but not too strong.”
“What sort of things?” says Fetzer.
Nancy sips again. “Through the wall. He raises his voice but I can’t hear the words. And sometimes when I barge in on him he shuts up real fast.”
Fetzer says, “Can you barge in on him some more?”
Nancy smiles at her coffee. “I do seem to be letting my manners go these days.”
“Maybe it would help if we go over what we’ve got,” says Nelson, and he tells her about the discrepancy between the Pentagon contract for five million, and the four and a half mil assigned to it in the department budget. Nancy’s mighty curious how we got hold of the budget, and I just say, “I plead the fifth.”
Then Nelse tells her about the five President’s Advancement Grants that Reynolds got this year, adding up to five hundred K.
Nelson fans Reynolds’s grant applications across the table. “And we’re pretty sure these are bogus. The awards are a fraud.”
Nancy picks up one of the applications, looks it over. “I did not see these.”
“So, if you hear anything that might be even slightly related,” says Fetzer.
“It’s your patriotic duty,” I say, and make my voice deep. “If you see something, say something.”
Hilarity fails to ensue.
Nancy now looks dazed. She slides the application back onto the coffee table. She takes a sip of her coffee. “I kinda wish you hadn’t told me this.”
Fetzer looks at the floor. “Yeah.”
“I need to keep my job,” she says.
“Your name never came up on anything we looked at,” I say.
“I know that.” She slams the words between us. “’Cause this is all new to me. But now I gotta go back to work knowing. And that’s not gonna be easy.”
“Sorry,” says Fetz. “You have our word that no matter what, you won’t get associated with any of this.”
She bangs her coffee mug on the table and bears down on Fetzer. “How do you even know this shit?”
He smiles, leans back and crosses his legs. “’Fraid I can’t tell you that, Nancypants.”
Nelse and I share a WTF glance.
Nancy stares at Fetz for a few tight seconds, then whacks him on the knee and laughs. “No one’s called me that in years.”
“Do you miss it?” says Fetz. “Activism?”
“Oh, I’m still active. Just ’cause I dress for the office doesn’t mean I’m not working for a better world, nuh-uh.”
“Cool,” I say. “What are you working on?”
She gets a satisfied look. “I coordinate campaigns for NorthEast Portland Health Concern. Right now we’re pushing to get a soymilk option on school lunches.”
“Because many African Americans are lactose intolerant,” says Nelson.
“Exactly.”
“We should do a story on that,” I say. “Milk and cheese being carbon- intensive foods that not everyone can even digest—”
Asshole Fetzer interrupts with, “Speaking of activism, what about yesterday’s rally, huh?” Then he asks Nancy why aren’t more people of color at the rallies, and I’m thinking, Dude, we’ve thrown her one curveball already. Maybe now’s not the time.
And Nancy’s eyebrows are up yet again. “Those rallies of yours are all organized by white people, that’s why.” She crosses her legs and her hands get going, those manicured nails slicing the air. “They tell their white friends. They advertise in white places. They don’t come into the black communities and let us in on what’s going on, or ask us to get involved.”
“Well, okay,” says Fetz. “But they’re no secret. There’s been a lot of flyers, it’s been on the radio. On Indymedia—”
“Indymedia here is pretty white,” I say.
He says, “It just seems tragic when the kids most likely to be sent to die in Iraq are going to be of color.”
Nancy leans forward. “Hell yeah, it’s tragic. But look at your alliances. It’s still mostly white groups, like unions, right? Or if it’s people of color, they’re far away, like in Iraq or Palestine.” She sits back, her nylons rasping. “We got our own Palestine right here. People shoved to the bottom and held there and the police on the border so they don’t get out. And nobody on the other side of that border says hey, something’s wrong here. You’re protesting all those billions that go to the war machine, why aren�
�t you taking it a step further and demanding those billions go to our own communities? Our own people? Our own schools?”
I shake my head. “Damn straight.”
Nelson, ever logical, frowns. “But that’s exactly what most progressives do demand.”
Nancy shakes her head. “Nuh-uh. Not in the same way. Not to where you get thousands taking to the streets. You think this is some new war about to start? It’s not new. It’s been going forever. For the folks in Iraq, folks everywhere, lot of them right here in the US. You think it’s going to stop because a bunch of white kids get their panties in a twist?”
Nelson lamely says, “If people of color joined in, it would send a stronger message.”
Nancy hurls out a beefy arm. “You think we wanna go marching somewhere we aren’t supposed to and get arrested for it? Hell, no! Jail isn’t some romantic destination, let me tell you. You think black folks are saying hey, bro, let’s go bust some shit up to protest the white war machine and then go to jail for it? How ’bout Latino folks, huh? All those undocumented ones? How ’bout Indians? You think that when a person of color gets arrested for protesting they get out of jail the next day suffering nothing more than lost sleep and needing a shower?” She sits back with a huff of air. “Think again.”
“Amen,” I say, and Nancy nods.
Fetzer takes a soft slurp from his coffee. You started this, dude, get back in.
“Wow,” says Nelson. He rubs his chin. “Then we’ve got one giant communication failure happening here. See, the big rallies are legal. That’s the point. You agree to walk between A and B and the police agree not to crack your skull for it. And the whole raison d’etre of the antiwar coalitions is that all oppression is connected. It’s part of the message. It is all connected. We’re not ignorant of that.”
Nancy sniffs. “Well, the message is not getting across. You call for peace around the world, but when it comes to peace at home most white folks just want peace on the plantation. Why should we join your marches when we don’t see you defending us in our own struggles? You can get eleven thousand people—”
Fetzer lifts his hand like he’s in a classroom. “Twenty-five to thirty.”