“Maybe I can fix this,” he says. “We know how the system works. We could maybe check it into the Baby Escape tomorrow? Pretend we are shoppers? . . . Who is off tomorrow? You, Pineapple, you work in the back so you’re not so recognizable. You could pretend it’s your baby and, you know, check it in . . . then it would be somebody else’s problem.”
I have a sick feeling. What if this has been going on for months? What if this baby was left there months ago, and each night somebody finds it and doesn’t know what to do so they take it home and then they pose as a busy shopping parent?
“Well, shit,” I say. “You can’t just embezzle a baby. You can’t just erase the transaction. Babies aren’t fungible. You can’t just swap them like wrong-size underpants.
“No,” I say. “What we have to do is get this baby completely out of the system, permanently. For good.”
“We can’t keep it,” says Timmer, but the way he holds the baby’s round little foot in his hand, it is obvious he would like to find a way to make that work. And not just for Juliette’s sake.
“We absolutely cannot! I’m not saying we keep it.” How could that work? 5er is the only person home most days, and it worries me that we expect him to be responsible for himself, much less a baby. “No,” I say. “We have to get rid of it.”
They all look at me. I read confusion, sadness, a flicker of horror.
“Shhh! We’re not going to smash it like it’s an escaped popcorn mousie.”
They hadn’t thought of that. Now all the sadness is replaced by horror. There is still plenty of confusion.
“The SpeedyMed hospital,” I say. “We cut the bracelet off and take it there. Sneak it in and leave it in a bathroom or something. I’m pretty sure they have surveillance in the hospitals, but we can work around that. I mean, we can scout the place out, stand so we block the cameras. I mean, it works for Kral; we can make it work.
“We can’t spend time thinking about this,” I say. “We just need to get it done. Timmer, get the car.” I can’t let anybody back out now. I know that. They know it too; that’s why they do what I say.
By the time we get to the hospital, we have the whole plan. It’s a good plan. 5er and Timmer stay in the car with Juliette, because we all know she can’t be any part of this. She is not a person who goes unnoticed, and I still don’t trust her not to go wobbly. At least she thought far enough ahead to grab a clean diaper and some sleepy-sippy juice when she left work, so the thing shouldn’t make noise or smell bad. I put the baby in my AllMART bag with some air holes punched in it.
All we have to do is go inside the emergency room, then Luck makes a blind spot, Pineapple starts a fight, I put the bag in a corner — and we all run. It is a great plan.
We didn’t expect the metal detector at the doorway, but it doesn’t matter because the baby isn’t metal, so we sail right through. We didn’t expect the really long line of sick people snaking back and forth in the hall either. But a crowd is good. Extra cover. Good. Luck moves into position and gives a little thumbs-up. Pineapple punches the guy in front of us in line. That guy turns around and snarls at Pineapple before he hits Pineapple in the teeth so hard I’m shocked. I’m frozen. But before Pineapple gets hit again, the guy is on the floor twitching and bucking. Tased. That’s when we see the guard. The guard has already used his Taser, so he’s got a gun drawn now, and it’s pointed at Pineapple.
Luck is on Pineapple’s side, though, and yells, “Gun! Gun!” The whole crowd stampedes and crushes against one another. We are close enough to the door that we get pushed back through the metal detector and into the street.
That’s when I notice I’m still carrying the bag with the baby in it. Pineapple and Luck are running down the street. I don’t know what else to do, so I put the bag full of baby down in the middle of the sidewalk, and then I run too.
I don’t say anything except “Go, go, go” when I scramble into the front seat. I’m rocking back and forth like I can push the car forward with my own nervous weight. Timmer turns the key in the ignition and pulls away very prudently, which makes me nuts. I’m listening for sirens, which I hear, but there are always sirens in this neighborhood. Sirens are just background noise. I’m chewing on my lips and watching for I don’t know what to descend on us, and catch us, and punish us. In the backseat, Pineapple and Luck are high-fiving. Juliette leans over and pulls Pineapple into an embrace. “Thank you,” she says.
5er climbs between the seats and squats on my lap. He puts his hands on my cheeks and stares at me, hard.
“5er should be in a child-safety seat,” I say.
“Seriously?” Luck says. “Shouldn’t we all be in child-safety seats?” Everyone in the car except me thinks this is very funny.
We have turned eleven corners and idled at three stoplights before Timmer takes an on-ramp onto the freeway. That’s when I say, “We are going the wrong way. We should be going east on Camino Campesino. This is northbound Enterprise Expressway.”
“We did the right thing,” says Timmer.
“But we are going the wrong way,” I say.
“If we did the right thing, then we can’t be going the wrong way. Trust me on this, Z.”
In the backseat, Luck is wiping blood off Pineapple’s mouth, and Pineapple is wiping tears off Juliette’s cheeks.
“I miss Raoul,” Juliette says, so softly. “I want him here,” she says. And her loneliness crushes my heart.
“We did the right thing,” says Timmer. “And so we are going to be rewarded.” And we drive and drive, just like gasoline is free. Streetlights are still on in some of the neighborhoods we pass, but they become less and less common, until the places where people used to live are dark and dead as asphalt. And then even the dark neighborhoods are gone. There is nothing but the road and the empty desert night.
I want to do this forever, but Timmer takes an off-ramp marked THE VILLAGES AT MOONRISE RIVER MEADOWS. The developer must have paid extra for the supersize signage. When we come to the big iron curlicue gate that hangs between two tall fairy-tale-castle towers, Timmer off-roads around the obstacle.
The streets are all laid out and named with green-and-white street signs where they intersect with Moonrise River Lane: Anemone Avenue, Buttercup Boulevard, Clover Commercial Corners — we go through the whole alphabet until we come to Wildflower Way. There is a house on Wildflower Way, and it is the only house in the world, at least in the world we can see. All the rest of the lots are full of nothing.
Timmer stops the car and climbs out. I follow him across the sand and rabbitbrush toward the front door.
A little LED candle flickers on a windowsill all of a sudden, and a professionally trained voice says, “Welcome to Candlelight Cottage.” Now the whole porch is bathed in golden light, and music is playing so softly I can hardly hear it with my ears. “Welcome home,” says the perfect voice. “Welcome home.”
“Go on,” says Timmer. “The door is open.”
I hesitate. “Welcome home,” says the voice, as patient as only a recording can be. I guess I tripped a switch somehow, maybe when I shifted my weight from one foot to the other on the welcome mat. “Welcome home.”
“It’s all on solar panels. It all still works. You’re going to love it.”
In the entryway, there is a big flat screen, framed like a painting and showing us the very house we are standing in now, except it isn’t stranded in the empty desert. It is where it is supposed to be, with trees all around. And it’s magically wintertime, with a snowman in the yard. I can see the snowflakes drifting down like a dust of powdered sugar on the tree branches and a rose arbor that isn’t really outside. There is a smell of fir trees and peppermint. Then the snow melts away, and it is a sunny morning and all around the house there are yellow daffodils nodding and agreeing with the sun. While I’m distracted by the wings of a blue butterfly and a whiff of bread, the sky gets dark and suddenly it is full of blossoming fireworks. They are completely silent. They smell like vanilla. The sparks
shower down, and all the leaves on the trees flare scarlet and yellow. There’s a smiling jack-o’-lantern on the porch beside a basket of red, round apples. I can smell the apples.
“Come in; Candlelight Cottage is home,” says the voice. The lamps start glowing, inviting us into the living space. There is one red chair by the CGI fire in the fireplace. A book is open on the seat. The carpet on the floor is soft and faintly colorless. The television screen wakes up and the camera pans around a room — no this room — which seems more spacious filled with furniture than it does right now. This is how it will be: a bowl of popcorn on the table, soft pillows, an orchid, a mirror. And even though the view says I’m there, looking right into the video screen over the fireplace, I have no face. I am as empty as air.
“Why didn’t they steal it?”
Timmer shrugs. “Dunno. I only found it on accident while I was lonely driving. Maybe nobody else knows. Or it isn’t worth the gas and time. But you love it, don’tya?”
There is a sound of tinkling glasses to help the shifting lights guide us into the kitchen. “Made for entertaining. Made for family and friends,” says the screen built into the refrigerator door. And it shows us how it will be: a birthday cake with candles . . .
But I stop watching. I reach for the faucet at the sink and turn it. Nothing happens. Timmer shrugs. The electric works because of the solar panels, but we are in the desert, and there is no work-around for water. Then he opens the fridge door. There’s a piece of birthday cake inside. Timmer picks it up by the fork stuck in it, turns it upside down, and bangs the whole unit — cake, fork, frosting, plate — on the marble counter. Nothing happens. The cake is a lie, an acrylic fake.
We run upstairs, and there it is, the master suite. And the television there starts showing us how it will be, but all I can see is how it isn’t. I open the door to the walk-in closet, and the smell in the air is of my own AnnaMom’s perfume. It isn’t fair. And it also isn’t fair that there is a puddle of black silk dress on the floor and a pair of shoes, all like she just stepped out of them, and I should be able to hear her turn on the shower and she should call me: Zoëkins, bring me a towel.
“Come on,” says Timmer. I point at the dress and shoes, but he isn’t haunted by them. He picks them up, and they are only a trick like the cake, not real. He tosses them with a flip of the wrist and sails them across the bedroom.
“Come on. You hafta see the rest.”
We cross the hall and open a door. The voice says, “Perfect for an office.” And it shows us a gleaming desk, an executive chair . . . “Or a growing family.” And the picture shifts and shows us a crib, with a rumpled blanket and a teddy bear but no baby.
Timmer pulls me farther down the hall. There is a glass door, and beyond it is a little balcony. “Look,” says Timmer, and he points like he just invented the sky. Mars is rising pink and orange and huge over the eastern horizon. That’s crazy. I know it isn’t Mars. It is only the moon, turned pink and pregnant as an apricot by the smoke from the burning world.
I can hear the downstairs rooms murmuring. Their stories leak out into the night. The empty concrete basements are quiet black wells, holes where the starlight falls in and is never seen again. I can feel all the rooms in all the houses that were never built, all the breathing of all the children who didn’t live in them as they rock in the cradle of sleep without dreams.
I get up. I put on my uniform. I pin on my badge and I pin on my smile. I become Zero. It is a comfort, being Zero. Zero is working the first shift. Zero likes opening.
The lights are on, the music is on, and the doors are clean and shiny in the sunlight. The janitorials have made the floors shiny too. If Zero were a consumer, Zero would like to come early, before the doors are smudged, before the clothes are slipped off the hangers and fall to the floor, before the shopping carts full of products are abandoned by shoppers who remember they don’t have money.
Zero would come to the store early. That’s what Zero would do. Before every piece of fruit is touched and the bruises darken on the apricots and pears. It would be the sparkliest time, and Zero could move through the store as if it were all her own. It makes Zero feel drowsy and happy just to think about it.
There is a deer in the cereal aisle. At first I think I have self-comforted too much and I really have fallen asleep. Then I think it must be a special promotion — or a joke. Some joker has moved a taxidermied deer that belongs in the Great Outdoors to the grocery aisles. But then the deer startles. Its pointed feet tap and slide on the shiny floor, and its butt crashes into an endcap display of cereal boxes. The bright-colored cartons scatter across the floor.
I hear tapping and crashing and shouting and then a heavy bang. The sound of many voices. I walk in the direction of the noise. There is a crowd around the double sliding doors that lead to the Garden of Eden. When I’m close, I can see that the deer is there, on the pressure mat that opens the doors. The deer was going too fast for the doors to respond. Maybe it leapt and never touched the mat at all. It hit the shatterproof glass, and the glass didn’t break. It is very strong glass, made strong enough to withstand an accidental ramming with a cart full of ornamental gravel.
Now, though, the door is hiccupping open from the dead weight.
“Cleanup at entrance to the Garden of Eden.” I hear the announcement. “We open in five minutes, associates. Your smile is AllMART’s welcome mat.”
I look at the deer, so still. On the other side of the doors, I can see the plants, green and plush with water.
A janitorial services associate arrives pushing a mop in a wheeled bucket. The water in the bucket is fresh; big soap bubbles float on top. In a couple of hours, that water will be gray and smell like pickle juice and puke. He looks at the deer. He looks at his mop handle. Then he steps over the deer and enters the Garden of Eden. When he returns, he has a big wheeled cart, the kind they use for delivering bags of Bats of Happiness guano fertilizer to shoppers in waiting cars in the parking lot. He heaves the deer onto the cart and pushes it toward the nearest janitorial exit in the back of the store. He leaves the mop and bucket behind, but I see he will need it when he gets back. He will need it to wipe away the little trail of blood and filth that the deer is leaving behind.
The boxes scattered on the floor are waiting for me. It’s a mess that I need to fix.
“Welcome to AllMART! It is a great day for shopping. A great day for you.”
Five minutes ago, a live deer was dancing on cereal boxes. Now there is no trace that it ever existed.
Today, we are walking over the pedestrian bridge. Timmer has parked his car on the other side. When we walked across the bridge to work, both of us were silent. I was thinking about the baby, and how heavy it was inside that bag, and how hard my heart was beating when I ran away. But now, walking back, Timmer reaches out and stops me. He leans close and says, “I have to tell you something, Z. I need you to know.”
I can hardly hear him over the whine and gust of the traffic streaming by under our feet. I can smell his shoulder.
“You need to know.” I can feel the breath of his words. “Raoul’s dead.”
This is not what I wanted Timmer to say.
“Raoul used visit Juliette at work sometimes. Sure, AllMART policy discourages social visits, but Raoul was good at pretending to be a customer when anyone else was in earshot. It was hard for him to pretend he was a customer when Juliette was working in Fancy ManiPedis, though. Raoul was not the sort of man who got manicures. That he couldn’t even pretend.
“So that day he looked for me, and he found me in the Garden of Eden.
“There was this big shipment of Bats of Happiness. I hadda move all these bags from a forklift and stack them in the right place on the aisle.
“I had a machete to use to cut the straps that tied the loads to the pallets, but it had to be done careful. If I got wild, I’da sliced a bag with the machete. That woulda meant inventory loss, and a cleanup-on-aisle, and probably some yelling at me for ma
king a dumb mistake.
“So I was standing back and thinking about the best way to make the cuts.
“Suddenly Raoul was there and he made some joke about the shit that makes people happy, and he slapped the load to make his point.
“The snake struck three times before I remembered I had a machete in my hand.
“I cut it in half, but it kept twisting and showing its teeth. It kept moving even after Raoul stopped.
“I tried that first aid thing we saw in training. But I wasn’t sure how to do it. I’m pretty sure I was just beating on his dead heart. I started yelling, but no one came. Then I grabbed the service phone, and I could hear my own voice yelling, ‘Help! Help! Help!’
“I didn’t even tell them which aisle, so it took a while before they came.
“Then someone went and got a big wheeled cart, and they picked him up and took him away, out of sight in the back. Then a guy came and said I should come too. He took me to the back and told me to wait there. So I stood there by dead Raoul. After a while, I leaned over and hugged him.
“I know it’s weird to hug a dead guy, but he was my friend. When I hugged him, his truck keys fell out of his pocket. I picked them up and put them in my pocket. Then I took his phone.
“It took a long time for the SpeedyMed ambulance to arrive, but it finally got there. They asked if he was family.
“I said no. I said the dead man was a stranger.
“I just stood there some more, after the ambulance took him away, until my phone rang and the message said to go back to work.”
“I think Juliette should know. She needs to know the truth,” I say.
“Promise me you won’t . . .”
“It’s not for me to tell. But you have to stop sending the texts. You can’t keep sending her love messages from a dead man. The lie, it’s making it worse. You just let her keep hoping Raoul is coming back, and there isn’t any hope.”
“There is hope. Months and months of hope. Raoul was gone before you came. He was gone before I found 5er. That’s months of hope.”
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