by Lolly Walter
“We are lucky. The eastern entrance has no roof.”
Joe lifted his head and searched for the speaker. He found her to his right, the mother with the toddlers. Her lips were too puffy to be natural, and her heavily-tattooed eyelids and cheekbones gave her an almost ghoulish appearance, but her eyes were kind.
“Does it make a difference?” Joe asked.
“It does when it rains.” The woman smiled and extended her hand. “Melanie.”
“Good to meet you.”
“What? You don’t got a name?”
Joe smiled. “None that matters. Call me Joe.”
Melanie harrumphed. “You shoulda picked something whiter.”
“I was fourteen. So you’ve been through this before?” Joe glanced toward Devin to make sure he was listening, too.
“Third time. Miguel here” — she pointed to the larger of the two children — “his daddy lives up in the domes and he swears to me this time, I come to the gate, he’ll meet me and take Miguelito to live with him.”
Flix leaned hard into Joe’s side and spoke across him. “You’d ditch your kid?”
The blond lady with the ponytail stopped arguing with the round man in her company and watched Joe and Flix.
Joe laid his hand on Flix’s knee and squeezed. Shut up. “Will the government allow that?”
Melanie glared hard at Flix, then shrugged. “Miguel’s father, Mr. Davenport, says so. But twice I have waited in a tunnel to send Miguel to his father, and both times, I have failed. The guards do not look kindly upon us.”
One of the teenagers in line behind Aria coughed, a great hacking thing, then spit onto the floor. A thick ball of mucus and blood oozed down from the grate to the sewage river below. Aria bustled closer, and Flix scooted, too, until his shoulder was wedged behind Joe’s.
“We’ve had vaccinations,” Joe reminded them.
“You sit by Mr. Snots-a-lot, then,” Aria hissed.
The line moved forward about eighteen inches. Joe slid along the bench, stopping a respectable distance from Melanie, and leaned back, only to bang, again, against Flix’s bony shoulder. He sighed. They were not going to be able to make it through fourteen miles rubbing bone on bone against each other. “Flix, get off me.”
Flix shifted so now their hips bumped, too. “Let me in front of you, then. That kid is going to puke, and I am not getting it on me. This place doesn’t seem like it’s going to have showers and laundry.”
Joe started to stand, but Devin nudged his leg. “Sit. All three of you be quiet and get along.” His voice carried.
Everyone was staring at them now, not just the blond lady.
Joe’s face burned. Was Devin enjoying this? No. They were just playing the game.
“Sorry,” Flix whispered.
Joe ignored him. He focused on Devin’s leg against his own. He kept his mouth shut and obediently slunk forward every time the line moved. In his mind, he replayed the time back at Flights of Fantasy where he and Devin had ridden the merry-go-round at the carnival, Devin’s eyes dark in the carnival lights, the blue hidden until the ride ended and he was up close, pressing Joe back against the plastic pony; making Joe forget for a moment that he had responsibilities, that he wanted only to go north and find his father, that he didn’t fall in love.
“Hey,” Devin said.
Joe looked into those blue eyes that had captivated him that night. “Hey.”
Devin patted his chest, right over his heart.
Joe smiled.
“That’s it!” This time the interruption came from the blond woman with the ponytail. She snapped her fingers and pointed at Joe before walking over to stand right in front of him. “Oh, my God, talk about a lucky day in the tube. You’re the boy in the commercial.”
Joe heard himself gasp. The rest of the woman’s talk, Flix’s arm tight like a vise around his waist, Devin’s furrowed brow, it all receded until it was just him and Bea and that damned commercial. Boggs watching, filming without Joe knowing.
A sharp pain in his side brought him careening back to the present. Flix’s sharp fingernails released their hold on his skin.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but you must have my friend mistaken for someone else,” Flix said.
Devin stood, but as soon as he did, the woman’s extra-large companion moved close.
“Park it, sonny, I ain’t gonna hurt your poc none. Nah, I don’t make mistakes with faces.” The woman grabbed Joe’s jaw and twisted his face left and right. “Those bones. My goodness, but you’re even lovelier in person. Too skinny, though, honey. Is it the drugs?” She frowned but kept moving Joe’s head this way and that. “You gotta lay off the drugs, baby.”
Joe opened his mouth to say, “I don’t use drugs,” but all he got out was “I don’t” because as soon as he started talking, the woman shoved her thumbs in his mouth and pried it open wide. “Oh my God, look at those teeth! They must’ve cost a fortune! Boggsy’s such a cheapskate, too —”
Joe yanked his head back so hard it hit the wall. He was on his feet and didn’t remember standing. “Boggs?”
The woman stepped closer and lowered her voice. “I get it. Your current daddy over there doesn’t know you maybe make a little on the side.”
This couldn’t be happening. Joe grabbed on to the easiest part. “Please don’t call him my daddy. He’s younger than me.”
She glanced back at Devin appraisingly. “It ain’t the miles, honey; it’s the money.”
“He’s” — Joe swallowed — “okay. Please, Boggs? You know him?” Even saying it, it felt like Boggs would jump out from behind one of the other people in line. Appear in the ether, armed and ready to drag Joe back.
“Sure. All us people pleasers network together.”
Oh God. “He’s not here, right?”
The woman laughed. “Like Boggs’d be caught in the tube. Thinks he’s about royalty, doesn’t he, him and that snooty wife of his? Look, darling, I’d talk terms. Whatever he’s paying you, Boggs or your gentleman friend, I bet I can beat the offer. I treat my employees real good, too.”
“I’m not looking for work right now.”
“Take this.” She stuffed a business card into Joe’s pocket. “You ever change your mind — you give Helene first dibs, yeah?” Her eyes veered to Flix. “You’re not bad, either. I could get rid of that scar, bleach your skin a bit. You don’t have commercial boy’s charms, but...”
“He’s underage,” Joe said.
“More’s the pity. We play it legal. And ethical.” The woman, Helene, began to walk away.
Joe caught her arm. “Please don’t tell him you saw me.”
Helene nodded toward Flix. “He one of Boggs’s, too?”
Joe’s voice shook. “Yes.”
“That bastard won’t hear about you from me. But, beautiful? You may have been able to slide under the radar wherever you’ve been. You go into that dome, it’s only a matter of time ’til he finds out.”
“Thank you, Miss Helene.”
Helene waved her hand as she headed back to her spot in line. “My, but I do like that Southern charm.”
Joe sat, shaky, Flix’s arm back around his waist. He leaned into it, let Flix soothe him. For a few breaths, at least.
“Peter,” Devin said, “go play with Flix. I’d like to speak to Joe.”
Well, shit.
***
Joe had dreaded this, the moment when he had to tell Devin about the ad. How dumb he’d been. The story rolled off his tongue, what he’d seen on the EC at Clinton and Maribou’s and what he’d lived through in order to be Boggs’s star.
Devin didn’t waver. His hands balled into fists at his side, but in a tiny movement surely invisible to anyone who wasn’t sitting directly across from them, his index finger never stopped stroking the outside of Joe’s thigh.
So much scarier now was the threat of Boggs, the idea that all the way up here in Minneapolis, Boggs would be able to find them. He’d had access to Pet
er after he’d been stolen from his family. How much harder would it be for Boggs to target them specifically? Not hard enough.
“He won’t hurt us,” Devin said again and again, his voice soft.
“We don’t know that,” Joe whispered.
Night had fallen over the long hours they had talked. Dim, yellowed lights flickered from above, and the tunnel was silent but for the sniffles of Miguelito and his brother and the hacking cough of the teenage boy behind them. Every once in a while, a wail or cry would come from farther ahead, but it was too distant to worry about when Joe could feel Boggs’s hands all over his body.
“Up here,” Devin said, “we’ll have resources. My money.”
“Peter will be protected, I bet, once they learn who he is.” Joe liked that, liked putting his family into boxes where they’d be safe. “Aria never worked for him. She’ll be fine. We’ll say she’s Peter’s guardian or something.”
“That’s good. That’ll work.”
“I see the people here in the tube. Lots of black and Latino people are traveling with white people, as their servants or something.”
“You can be my butler.” Devin broke out a low, dirty laugh.
“Grow up, papi. I’ll get in all right, either with my dad’s name — you heard what that lady Melanie said about her son? — or with the special admittance test. Flix can be your housekeeper.”
Devin laughed again, louder, and someone yelled at him to shut up. Devin’s expression slowly lost its mirth. “How will you stay safe?”
“I know how to defend myself. I’ll change my name, find safe places to live and work.”
“Stay with me.”
Joe’s heart beat faster, and he tried to play it off. He hadn’t pictured himself living with Devin. Men didn’t live together. “I’d be a terrible butler.”
“Don’t be an asshole.” Devin looked up and down the tunnel. “I need a roommate.” He leaned in close. “It’s no one’s business what we do inside our own house. Stay.”
Joe nodded and let himself picture it.
***
Traversing the passage took twenty-seven days. In that time, Joe saw four fights. The brute with Helene, the madam, broke the neck of a man dumb enough to try to rob the round little man they were traveling with. Joe listened to the hacking cough of the boy behind Aria turn into horrible wheezes. Aria did what she could for the kid, but he died anyway. Gunfire erupted outside the tube; somebody’s guts ended up plastered red and dripping along its thankfully bulletproof exterior.
Worse, though, were the small things. The crying, inconsolable babies. The hungry children. The rape gangs that roamed the tube at night. Devin paid Helene’s security man to watch over them, so after the first time someone made the mistake of trying to rob them, they were left alone. But they heard it all. Saw it all.
Still, they made it.
The end came into sight as soon as Joe woke on that last day. He’d grown accustomed to shuffling some in his sleep, because the line never stopped, so he woke having traveled up a small incline from where he’d fallen asleep. For the last few days, they’d heard whispers up and down the line that they were getting close, but to see it was still a shock. Another squad of guards stood around a widening of the passageway. Just past them, Joe made out a few travelers stretching out the kinks, undergoing a scan and final pat-down, and changing into cleaner clothes. Off to the left, a simple metal door didn’t look nearly so inviting.
The line inched forward. No one was sitting now. People crammed in tight, forgoing personal space. Joe pressed up against Flix and Devin’s backs and kept his hand on Flix’s shoulder for balance. Ahead, Peter and Aria stood on tiptoes, probably trying to see whatever they could beyond the antechamber. Behind Joe, the crush of all the other travelers weighed on him, hands on his back, breath in his ears. They shuffled together, packed too close to risk taking steps.
Helene breezed through a tall gate of iron bars that swung forward to accommodate her then latched heavily back in place, leaving both of the men accompanying her trailing in her wake. The guards paused for a moment over her security man, asking him questions he was slow to answer. Through the bars, Helene spoke sharply to the shorter of the two, and the put-upon man rolled his eyes and addressed the guards. This time, they scanned him, then held a small white device up to the larger man’s mouth. The big man gagged. The guard withdrew the white instrument and used a small integrated IR scanner on his forearm to record whatever information he needed from the white device. He read his virtual display, then waved the two men past.
Little Miguel took longer. The crowd grew impatient and pushed in tighter as the guards used their comms to talk to someone that Joe couldn’t hear. Flix whispered over and over, “Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t do it.”
Eventually, a handsome, too-smug man appeared at the bars. He thrust his arm through them and made small-talk with the guards. He didn’t look at Miguel until the guard placed the white device in front of Miguel’s mouth and the kid gagged and started to cry. The guards repeated the procedure Joe had seen them use with Helene’s men, then the gate unlatched and swung open. One of the guards pulled Miguel from his mother’s arms and handed him off to the father.
“Please, Mr. Davenport! Have mercy!” Miguel’s mother, Melanie, shouted. “Help us!”
Miguel’s father kept walking like he hadn’t heard. The barred gate clanged shut behind him.
Melanie dissolved into sobs and incoherent Spanish. All Joe could make out was “my baby, my baby.” Melanie rushed at the gate, and two guards caught her.
“You did the right thing, miss,” one of the guards said as he pinned her arms around her other baby. He forced her to the metal door off to the left. At the last moment, he opened it and hustled her out. The door slammed closed. The noise of it reverberated through the tunnel. When it ended, not a sound came from outside. It was like Melanie had never been there, hadn’t just given up her son.
Peter turned terrified eyes back to Joe. “This is bad. I don’t want to do this. It wasn’t like this in Columbus.”
Flix nodded. “He’s right. We need to leave.” He dug his feet in, and Joe had to push him forward.
Joe swallowed his own misgivings. “It’s not going to be like that for us. We have a plan. Stick to it and we’ll be fine.”
Flix turned all the way around and swiped at the wetness on his cheeks. “My mom left me, Joe. Like that kid. Who the fuck does that?”
“Not us, okay?” Joe shook Flix a little, petted Peter. “You will be safe. I promise.”
“You’re holding up the line,” someone bellowed from farther back.
Aria took Peter’s hand and walked him forward.
Peter didn’t have the chip. Joe remembered, all the way back when Peter had gotten bitten and stung by the fire ants, the red, puckered line of skin over Peter’s shoulder blade. He’d seen the scar a million times since, worked out what had happened. The bastards that had trafficked Peter had stolen his citizenship. Or they’d tried, at least.
Now, one of the guards held up the white instrument again, this time in front of Peter’s face.
Peter gagged, and the guard took the device away to read it.
“Oh my God,” the guard said to the others. “It’s that missing kid. Peter, uh” — he checked his screen — “Hartford. The one where his parents got killed in Columbus? ’Cause what the hell ever happens there? That was back before Christmas. Where you been all this time, kid?”
Joe hurt for Peter, wished he could hug him. The stronger, tougher boy Peter had become seemed to melt away in the face of the guards’ questions. He looked so young and alone.
“He’s been through a trauma,” Aria said, and she did hug Peter. “He needs to be treated kindly.”
“Who are you, poc?” the guard asked.
Peter lifted his head. His voice shook, but he got out the words they’d rehearsed. “She’s my caregiver. I wouldn’t be alive without her. I need her to stay w
ith me.”
The lead guard frowned. “I don’t know, kid. Underages aren’t supposed to be allowed to keep servants.”
Real tears formed in Peter’s eyes. “I can’t trust anyone but them,” he whispered. “Please let her stay with me.”
“Aw, shit. Don’t cry.” The guard leaned into his comm. “Sarge, we got a missing kid down here. Peter Hartford. DNA confirmed. He wants to bring a poc in with him. Says she saved his life.”
All Joe heard in response was static, but the guard must have heard something else, because he nodded briskly before swiping his hand over the comm.
“Come let me enter your DNA, lifesaver.” He pulled Aria closer and stuck the DNA sampler in her face.
“That’s bullshit!” someone yelled from farther back in the tunnel. “I coulda brought a poc with me to save my life and keep me warm at night, too!”
“Shut up, Adler, you asshole,” the guard yelled back. “Yeah, I recognize your voice, you scrawny, rat-faced punk. This is a one-time only special circumstance. If we were gonna break the rules, we’d kick your ass out first thing.” The guard took a deep breath. To Peter, he said, “Sorry. We get a lot of repeat customers. You and your poc are cleared to enter.”
This time, it was Aria who looked back. For the first time in a long time, Joe saw Sadie and Liliana in her eyes, along with a bit of the girl she used to be. Would it be like that for each of them? A step back before the step forward?
“Thank you,” he mouthed.
Aria placed a careful hand on Peter’s back, and they stepped through the gate to the dome.
Joe didn’t know what he’d expected to feel. Elation, maybe. Accomplishment. All he felt was relief. Two of them were safe. Now for two more.
He managed a soft, discreet nudge of Devin’s ass to get him moving forward. They’d be together soon. Maybe in another hotel room at first, but then a place all their own.
Devin approached the guards. “It’s in my hipbone.” He smiled softly, and Joe knew they were remembering the same moment, when Joe had first told Devin about the chip.
“You have a money chip here.” Joe had slid a fingertip over the soft skin covering the implanted chip on Devin’s wrist first. Then he unfastened the button on Devin’s jeans. Devin grabbed at him, but Joe had let go and said, “That’s all I needed to undo. Feel.”