Veneer

by Daniel Verastiqui

  So many firsts, thought Rosalia, unable to recall anyone interrupting their time together. What had changed that made people so interested now? Was Gillock Pond hiding something under its veneer?

  “Look at you,” said a woman in a nightgown.

  “I know.”

  “Marshall, my hair! Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Reflections,” whispered Rosalia. They were all looking at their reflections in the pond. Mirrors were nothing more than reflective portals built in the veneer. With those gone, the only place to see a reflection would be...

  It was so low-tech, yet so effective in altering a population’s mood. The wonder on their faces made their eyes dance and their mouths curl. Deron had ripped out the backbone of an entire city and its people were reveling in it.

  Nightgown woman noticed Rosalia and beckoned to her. “Come here, dear. Pretty thing like you has no reason to be afraid.”

  “I’m not afraid,” she replied, trying to steel her veneer out of habit.

  The woman’s husband stepped aside and gave Rosalia room at the edge of the pond. After a deep breath, she leaned over and looked at her reflection.

  Freckles—dotting her cheeks. Deron had never mentioned those. And her hair wasn’t completely blonde; there were streaks of brown that set off the golden color. Reconciliation had changed the shape of her mouth over the years, adding contrast to define the edges. In the smooth water, she saw that her lips weren’t as full as she had made them out to be. The difference was small, but Rosalia couldn’t shake a decade of self-image so quickly. The girl in the pond looked like a long lost relative, someone known in childhood but sent away only to develop into a woman in the interim.

  Then it hit her. The reflection was what Deron had embraced on the sidewalk after coming back for her. He saw her for what she really was and still wanted her.

  “She’s speechless.” A wrinkled hand appeared on her shoulder. “You were expecting someone else, maybe?”

  “Not really,” she admitted, though it certainly wasn’t the same girl she had seen in the mirror the day before.

  “Well, at least you don’t have any gray in your hair.”

  “I like it,” said her husband. “It matches your clothes.”

  They tussled playfully behind Rosalia’s back. All around her, people where shaking their heads at the aberrations they saw in the water. Some looked pleased; a few pressed tenderly at old wounds or unexpected wrinkles. Within minutes, there were was no free real estate left around the pond. The crowd grew and Rosalia gawked at the variation, at the imperfection of natural humans.

  Ugliness has returned to Easton, she thought. If nothing else, it would make school more interesting.

  “What is it, dear?” asked the woman.

  Rosalia remembered herself. She had to get used to her emotions betraying her. “I just realized... I mean, everyone I know. I might not recognize them.”

  “Well, just think of it as a second chance to make a first impression.”

  “I’ve done that already,” said Rosalia, thinking of Deron on the sidewalk.

  “Oh. And how did it go?”

  The memory made her smile. “He said I was beautiful.”

  “He sounds like a smart boy.”

  “But I don’t know what he looks like.”

  The woman shrugged and looked at her husband. “Will it matter?”

  The dagger in Rosalia’s heart twisted. “Not anymore.”

  She withdrew from the crowd without waiting for a response. It was time to leave Gillock Pond and continue towards downtown, but Rosalia felt another attack coming on. They had plagued her all night, each one trigged by some lingering memory of Deron. This one spawned from the appearance of the swinging chair at the edge of the park; she was sure that if she sat down on it, she would keep to one side and leave Deron enough room to sit beside her.

  Her heart pounded. Only one thing stopped the attacks: progress. So long as she kept pursuing justice, kept working towards the goal, the pain lessened. But then downtown was so far away, even by tram.

  A sound Rosalia hadn’t heard all morning broke out over the relative quiet. It was as much a surprise to everyone else; they all turned together to look at the gray cruiser creeping up the street. A uniform was hanging out of the passenger window with a bullhorn held to his mouth.

  “This is a city-wide notice. A mandatory meeting will be held at Easton Central High School this morning. Please proceed to the school by foot. Do not attempt to drive as all traffic lights have stopped functioning. All of your questions will be answered by city officials. The Easton Police Department has no further information at this time.”

  He repeated the message twice before noticing Rosalia and her new friends. The cruiser stopped in the middle of the street and both uniforms got out.

  “I haven’t been to Central in ages,” said the nightgown woman. She had drifted towards Rosalia out of some ingrained maternal instinct.

  “What happened to the veneer?” shouted one of the men in the crowd.

  The driver of the cruiser put his hands up. “Ladies and gentlemen, please proceed to the high school. Everything will be explained to you.”

  “Why can’t I reconcile anything?!”

  “Listen, we don’t have anything to tell you. All we know is that the mayor has mobilized a response team and they are handling the situation.”

  “Are they going to fix the veneer?”

  “They...” The uniform hesitated and looked around at all the faces. “They will answer that question at the school, I assure you. I suggest everyone heads there immediately.”

  There were murmurs in the crowd, but almost everyone wanted to know whether the veneer would come back. Rosalia felt her own curiosity, but all she could focus on was the idling cruiser in the street and the providence of its arrival.

  The police had come to her.

  As the group broke up, Rosalia approached the uniforms.

  “Excuse me,” she said.

  The driver looked her up and down. “Don’t I know you?” He raised his hand to cover her face.

  Rosalia recalled the lewd smile of the uniform standing guard in front of Deron’s house. He had looked and sounded so official the moment before, but now there was no mistake.

  “Aren’t you the dick that tried to keep me from seeing Deron’s mom?”

  His partner laughed. “Well, she knows you, Aguilar.”

  “Whatever,” continued Rosalia. “I want to report a crime.”

  “A crime? And what kind of crime do you want to report?” They laughed in unison.

  “Murder. There was this agent—”

  Aguilar’s smile broke. “What did you say?”

  “An agent.”

  His partner crossed his arms and inched closer. “What about this agent?”

  “He...” Rosalia shrank under the increased scrutiny. “He shot my boyfriend last night. I saw it happen.”

  “You’re sure it was an agent?”

  Rosalia nodded and tried to read the anxious looks on their faces.

  The uniforms shared a glance.

  Aguilar stepped to the side and motioned to the cruiser. “I’m going to need you to come downtown with us.”

  Relief rushed over Rosalia like a steady breeze.

  Finally, she thought.

  66 - Russo

  “Then what happened?”

  Russo groaned and arched his back against the irritating tingle that was running down his spine. He had been on his side since they brought him in, unable to put pressure on his fractured shoulder blade. The nurses were alternating hot and cold, coming in every thirty minutes to adjust his bandages. Russo counted four different women, two wrinkled in the face and the others young but hardened. They all had the same humorless demeanor and despite their rehearsed concern, they seemed to share the same bad mood. It wasn’t until the haggard uniform walked in and sat in the chair across from his bed that Russo joined the women in their agitation.

 
“I told you,” he replied. “I don’t remember.”

  The uniform looked uncomfortable with his little notebook and pen. His large hands held it awkwardly, unsure of how to write without slipping off the page.

  “So you were out for a walk in the middle of a storm and the next thing you know, you wake up here?”

  “Exactly.”

  The uniform scoffed. “With multiple contusions on your face and a broken scapula? You like look someone tried to hamburger you, son.”

  The image of Deron feeding Russo’s broken corpse into a meat grinder flashed in his mind.

  “Not to mention the shift nurse tells me you were pushed out of an agency cruiser in front of the ER. Care to explain that?”

  Russo looked away from the spot he had been burning into the wall. “Agents dropped me off?”

  “Oh, now you remember something?”

  “Where are they now? Where’s Ruiz?”

  The uniform flipped to a new page and scribbled the name. “Who is Ruiz?”

  “Agent Ruiz. He’s the man that’ll have your job for hassling me.”

  He laughed, exposing his yellowing teeth. “You really think an agent is going to protect you from me? You think I’m afraid of those Vinestead thugs?”

  “You should be...”

  “If anyone’s going to protect you, it’s good ol’ Detective Pierce.” He tapped his chest where his badge should have been. “So you tell me what really happened and I’ll make sure everyone gets what’s coming to them.”

  The tingle had turned into a full-on itch and Russo bucked in the bed, unable to find relief. He thought about asking the detective to scratch his back, but figured the man would take it metaphorically.

  “I’m not talking to you,” said Russo, gritting his teeth. “I’ll only talk to Agent Ruiz.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Russo narrowed his eyes at Pierce. “It’s above your pay grade.”

  “That’s probably true. I don’t get paid nearly enough to deal with pieces of shit like you. I’d take agents over juvenile delinquents any day of the week. At least they have some sensibility. It’s just too bad there aren’t any left.” He paused, a smile on his face. “You haven’t heard the news, have you?”

  “Like I wouldn’t notice the veneer is down?”

  “Yeah, that.” Pierce put the pen in his mouth and chewed it for a moment. “But no veneer means no portals and that means information is flowing slower than my morning piss. We’ve got cops rounding up people like cattle and herding them to the schools. Smarter people than you have already asked themselves: why aren’t agents handling this?”

  There was a fog where a cogent answer should have been. Logical thinking gave way to pride; the agents weren’t helping because that kind of work was below them. They were the elite of Easton and had no business interacting with the commoners except to put them down or bring them up. Let the uniforms worry about the citizens. A good agent would only be concerned with Vinestead.

  “I’ll tell you why, son. Because every one of those fairy bastards skipped town overnight. There’s a convoy half a mile long on its way to Sonora right now. And in case you haven’t reconciled two and two, that means there’s no agency oversight in Easton anymore. The guns are down and the gates are open. The bad times are back, Russo, and it’s only gonna get worse unless I get these people under control. To do that, I have to know why Vinestead decided to jump ship. And from what I’m told, you’re one of the last people to even see an agent. So be straight with me. How is all this connected?”

  I have no fucking clue, thought Russo. He remembered everything before the fight, but the event itself was a blur. It was possible that he had been losing, that for one terrible moment, he was at his lesser’s mercy. The image of Deron standing over him with a pipe raised in his hand lingered as the last frame of an unfinished memory. Something had happened to defer the pain and defeat. Something loud.

  Russo recalled sirens in the distance, hard to pick out over the rain and the thunder. Though Deron screamed at him, he heard the shouting of older men arguing about something. The pipe went up.

  Then a flash from the left—a gunshot.

  Deron fell out of sight and the world trailed after him.

  Agent Ruiz had saved him only to abandon him later? It made no sense.

  “Are you aware that Jalay Chapman killed himself yesterday? He was your friend, wasn’t he?”

  Russo blinked away the questions.

  “Strange thing though; I can’t find any record of an Easton PD investigation. For some reason, all we have on file is an open-shut jacket signed by one Agent Memo Ruiz.” He flipped through his notebook. “Now where do I know that name from? Oh yeah, he’s the one that’s going to protect your ass from my foot.”

  The detective paused as one of the older nurses came into the room. He stared at Russo as the woman injected something into his drip.

  A warm sensation grew out from Russo’s elbow. Within seconds, he felt the general awareness of his body dim, though the tingle remained.

  “But you must know him better than I do, don’t you, Russo? After all, you’ve spent a lot of time with Agent Ruiz. From what I can tell, you’re the first person he talked to after Jalay’s body was found. You two shared a table at Late Andy’s Diner for an hour. What did you talk about?”

  “Since when do you follow high school students?”

  The detective sneered. “That’s your true veneer, isn’t it Russo? Your file says you suffer from an undeserved ego, but I thought the desk sergeant was just being flippant. But you are a little egoist aren’t you? The whole city and everyone in it revolves around your wants and needs, right?”

  “In a perfect world,” replied Russo. He flexed his muscles under the blankets. If it came down to a fight, he wanted to be ready.

  “No,” said Pierce, chomping on his pen again. “In a perfect world, we wouldn’t have to set aside an entire department just to keep tabs on Vinestead’s goons. We tolerate them because we have to, not because we trust them. They’re company men, Russo, every goddamn one of them. Type A personalities across the board: focused, goal-driven, and willing to do anything inside and out of the law if it serves Vinestead’s interests. And every once in a while, we get a real sicko like Ruiz who treats Easton as his personal playground. I’ve tailed him personally for two years now and have never been able to make anything stick. But now I have you.”

  “You have shit,” said Russo, smiling.

  “What I have is footage of you pushing Jalay Chapman out of a parking garage.”

  Someone poured a bucket of ice down Russo’s back.

  “Do you know what the penalty for murder is, son? They don’t kill you nice and easy; you’re too valuable for that. No, they ship you off to Mexico where you’ll eat beans and maggot rice for the rest of your meaningless life. I’m talking twenty-three hour lockdown in a six by six cell, not even a bucket to piss in. And that one hour a day you get to leave your cell? Best case scenario’s that one of the bigger guys claims you for his own. Otherwise, they’ll be passing you around like a tube sock, if you get my drift.”

  Detective Pierce glanced towards the open door, which Russo could barely see from his vantage point. He lowered his voice a bit as the footsteps of nurses rushed by.

  “Are you feeling me?”

  “Fuck you,” said Russo. “I haven’t been scared of uniforms since kindergarten.”

  He laughed, though it sounded forced. “No, Russo, I’m not trying to scare you. Like I said, that’s all best case scenario. But if you keep up with the attitude, you might just end up in the ReTread program.” Pierce waited a beat. “Never heard of that?”

  “You’re gonna tell me anyway.”

  “It’s a complicated legal process, but after you’re shipped south of the border, the Mexicans sell you back to Vinestead as cheap labor.”

  “And if I don’t want to work?”

  “You won’t have a choice. That’s where the ReTread part c
omes in. They’ll wipe you clean, Russo. All your memories, every thought you’ve ever had, pretty much anything that makes you the little shit you are today: gone for good. After they blank slate you, they’ll crate you down to Peru to build all of their little gadgets. On the books, Russo Rivera would be dead, but down south, you’d spend the rest of your life working your fingers to the bone.”

  “Bullshit.” He tried to dismiss the idea. The way Pierce talked about it was too rehearsed, as if he’d given this speech before.

  The detective shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. But I’ve seen that look on many a veneer in my time. Whether you want to admit it or not, you’re scared of the possibility. Embrace that fear, Russo. No one will blame you. I’d be shitting the bed if I were in your shoes. Luckily for you, it doesn’t have to end that way. We don’t even have to take a single step down that road.”

  Russo felt a new pain radiating from his hand and realized he was digging his fingernails into his palm. He had just done the same song and dance with Ruiz; now the Easton PD wanted to cut in.

  “What do you want?” he asked, his lips barely moving.

  “Ruiz. The Agency. They’ve bailed on us and I want to make sure they never come back.”

  “Don’t you want your veneer?”

  Pierce pointed a thick finger at Russo. “Don’t you want to be free? Or are you content to live the rest of your life with their greasy fingers around your brain stem?”

  He had a point. The only reason for joining up with Ruiz had been to gain advantage over the commoners. With the veneer gone, that advantage counted for nothing. That’s why all the agents had left town; the system that supported their power had collapsed. But how? What the fuck had happened to the veneer?

  “Tell me why I can’t reconcile anymore.”

  “I don’t know,” said Pierce.

  “Then no deal.”

  Frustration passed like a ripple over his face, making Russo smile inside.

  “Look, if I knew what caused this, I would tell you, because from the looks of it, the veneer isn’t coming back. That’s the reality now. You can either accept it or we can give you a crash course in Spanish. It’s your choice.”