2028, p.7
2028, page 7
“Elle! It’s Karen! Open up. Hurry!”
“What? You gotta take a pee alla sudden or somethin’?” After a quick angry buzz and the click of the lock, Karen thrust the thick oak and glass portal open and sprang up the carpeted stairs to the second floor. Elise held her door open as her friend brushed by her. “Jeezzuz, bitch! You look like shit. What the fuck’s up?”
“I quit my fuckin’ job, Elle,” Karen said breathlessly.
Elise hatched a cunning smile as she closed her door. “Well, that’s good news. I thought people never left that Kenton Kingdom. Somethin’ about, like, I dunno, repercussions?”
“Something like that. Can I stay here for a few days?”
She patted her mussed-up mop of blonde back into some semblance of shape. “Uh...”
Karen noticed her blouse had been unevenly buttoned. “Oh,” she reasoned sheepishly. “I got you at a bad time.”
“All times are fuckin’ bad, nowadays.”
“Your timing always sucks, Karen,” Salvatore Zinnio said as he sauntered into the living room while buttoning his shirt.
“Kar’s quit her job,” Elise told him.
“Why’s that? Saunders finally send his PRICE goombahs after ya?”
Karen froze at that possibility. She wouldn’t put it past Saunders to toss her away in some gulag for the transgression of offending him. “I didn’t quit. I walked out.”
“Well, Kar. They ain’t gonna like you much for that,” Elise said.
“Whydja do that, Karen?”
She stayed silent as she composed a logical answer.
“Come on, girl. You can tell me and Sal. It ain’t like we’re gonna bite you in the leg, or nothin’.”
“I dunno, Elle. I got scared by a really bad feeling, I guess.”
“Yeah,” she scoffed. “By way of a few drinks, I smell.”
Karen flashed her a glare.
“What was it, Karen?” Sal asked. “Did that bastard you work for do something to you?” He narrowed his gaze. “Did he hurt you?”
In more ways than one, she thought. “No. Nothing like that. But I’m afraid of him.”
He intensified his dark-browed look at her. “What did he say to you? Did he threaten you, hon?”
She felt like she was watching herself from some sort of netherworld. She lost her stance as she weaved off another surge of lightheadedness. “I need to sit,” she gasped, then slumped into the couch. “I—I don’t know if he threatened me. Maybe. I just had a feeling something bad might happen.” She cuddled a throw pillow close to her chest as though it could have been a teddy-bear, as a tear streamed down her cheek. She damped it away with a corner of the pillow, then let out a mighty sigh.
Elise sat down next to her, and gently laid a hand on her shoulder. “Kar, sweetie. I don’t think I ever seen you this scared. It ain’t like you. Tell us. What’d that shithead say to you?”
Karen laid her head in Elise’s shoulder, and Elise lightly stroked her hair, like two sisters in a tender moment. “He might have threatened to kill me.”
“Seriously?” Elise gasped.
“That fuckin’ meathead!” Sal seethed. “What’d he tell you, hon? Exactly.”
Karen tried to assemble her thoughts. “He told me he could have me executed for telling him somethin’ he didn’t wanna hear,” she sniffled.
Elle glanced up longingly at her boyfriend, then back at Karen. “What was that, baby? Wha’dya tell that bitch shithead he din’t like?”
“Uh...three people were taken, or escaped, from that gulag up in Alaska.”
“Where they keep the dissidents?” Sal asked. ”To me, that’s fuckin’ good news.”
“Not to him. He got pissed because, I don’t know, just ‘cause I fuckin’ told him. Maybe ‘cause they escaped last Friday and I didn’t find out ‘til this morning. He acted like he might have me killed about that.”
“Acted like he might?” Elise said as she continued to stroke Karen’s hair. “You said he tolt you, right?”
“...yeah. Said he could have me...have me,” she sniffed, “executed. Like kings who killed their messengers for bringin’ them bad news.”
“Sounds like somethin’ he might say,” Sal muttered. “Who was sprung? You know that, hon? Who escaped?”
“I don’t know, Sal. I think some newspaper reporter, and two Yale philosophy teachers there, who’d been up in Unqutuck since, like, three, four years ago, somethin’,”
Sal thought this over as he tried to connect the pieces. “A Yale philosophy teacher? Do you got a name?”
“Sylvia something Mexican, Gonzalez...something like that.”
“Sylvia ... Sylvia Morales, maybe?” Sal said.
“Yeah, that was it. Sylvia Morales.” Karen looked hopefully at Sal. “You know her? I think she was one of the ones who started the Neo-Publica.”
Elise also looked at her boyfriend. “I’ve heard of her.”
“Hot fuckin’ damn!” Sal said.
“Why hot fuckin’ damn, Sal?” Elle asked.
“Hot fuckin’ damn we could get some mojo up against these guys fuckin’ up our country, is why,” he said. “If Sylvia Morales’s back in business, so are we!”
“Shh! Sal,” Elle said as she waved an arm in the air. “Not so loud, you asshole.”
“What? You think we’re fuckin’ bugged? No way.”
“I dunno, Sal. That guy here the other day working on our fridge.”
“Right, Elle. He bugged the fuckin’ calzone. Not a chance. Not here in Carroll Gardens.” He looked Karen in the eyes. “Karen, hon? We maybe could get to that fuckin’ deficiente, Saunders. And maybe you can help.”
“How?” Karen asked.
“I dunno, yet,” he said. “We’ll figure somethin’ out. I gotta talk to some guys. You jus’ sit tight, okay?”
“So, I can stay here?”
He glanced at Elise, who nodded back at him. “ ‘s long you want, hon,” he said. “You got my protection, here.”
“Oh, great, Sal ,” Elise scoffed. “You don’ even wash the fuckin’ dishes round here. Whadya mean your pro-tec-tion?”
“I can do, stuff, Elle. Don’ worry.”
“Shit, Sal. ‘Don’ worry’s’ jus’ what I’m worried about,” Elle said.
7
The New-Publica Manifesto
March 3
A
t least the stumps of Sylvia’s two missing fingers weren’t so ugly anymore. Their nasty-looking cauliflower tips had been removed and softened at the expense of the remaining knuckles to completely remove her right ring and little finger. Often, she would imagine the phantom of those lost two digits when her mind was distracted as she typed—as now, with her concentration directed toward compiling her manifesto. It had been an effort to locate the far right keys—the O, P, , L, and ? ones—as she diddled her aching fingers along the keyboard. This prompted the remembrance of her time in the gulag and the mine, and then the deliberately slow, hot, gnawing pain of the camp-doctor’s hand-drawn saw cutting through her fingers. Her sour memories were diverted by her typing the manifesto in the chilly, darkened basement office in Yale’s School of Drama, a heavenly paradise by comparison.
Her gums ached as they adjusted to the dentures replacing her natural teeth that had blackened and rotted. She kept a bottle of Listerine available for when her fetid breath —or her imagination of it—came back to haunt her like the phantom fingers.
She looked over her shoulder at Hugh who had been putting their plunder of odd notes together into some semblance of order, as they worked on the finishing touches of the manifesto’s second draft. Even so, it still would take another few drafts to make It ready for printing.
“Did anyone ever talk to Abe about turning the heat up a little in here?” She was tempted to add I feel like I’m back on the tundra, but the demon memories would only rise up again.
“We’re on oil-heat rations this month,” he reminded her. “It’ll probably come on at...” he referred to his watch, “four this afternoon. At least that’s what the schedule said.”
“Heat ration schedules.” She shook her head in dismay. “I remember a time when the only schedules we looked at were class-times.”
“Gone are the days.”
She glanced forlornly at the smudged up, little computer screen. It was connected to a forty-year-old PC that a sixty-five-year-old techie who still understood such ancient things was able to scrounge from some dreck in the basement. He reconditioned it with DOS and that kludgy Word Perfect. At least she could type the words in and print them out, and with no internet available, she hardly needed any other functions. She thumped an index finger on the screen as though the computer might respond back, like the bygone I-pads of yore. “I suppose they really had to take all the computers,” she lamented.
“By edict of mien Führer,” Hugh said. “Computers are tools of sedition, especially on college campuses not sanctioned by his highness’s little dictatorship.”
“I didn’t think Kenton was smart enough to come up with verbiage like that.”
“Not Kenton. Stanley Saunders, with his PRICE and BlueShirt Sturmtruppen.” He flexed his aching fingers. “We gotta get this manifesto of ours out soon, so we can end this dictatorship, Syl.” He cupped his hands and blew into them. “Even if it’s just to get the damned heat turned back on.”
“Yeah,” she scoffed, then looked over at him concentrating on some random scraps of their notes. “How are your treatments going? You’re looking a little better—even for your normal ugly self.”
He offered up a blithe smile. “Why thank you, my dear...I think. I feel a little better, so maybe those doses of aldesleukin are working. Can’t say the same for Mitch. He was up all night puking and coughing. I think he might have reconciled himself to some truth he’s not telling us.”
Sylvia was struck with a dose of rigid silence. “How long, do you think?”
Hugh heaved a sigh. “I’m thinking more weeks than months.” He looked sadly at the notes. “I guess in Mitch’s case, that fucking Unqutuck will have gotten what they wanted, after all.”
They shrugged in unison as they heard the clink and scrape of the door being unlocked and opened. It was Mitch bearing coffee and crullers from Jillian’s Brew Hah- Hah. “Good morning troops. I figured we all could use this.”
“Warmth! My hero!” Sylvia said as she skittered her chair over to him to grasp a cup and a cruller. “I love you for this.” She loved him for everything, but there was no sense in admitting it to him.
“Thanks, brother.” Hugh said as he took his cup. “You know you shouldn’t be walkin’ around out there in public if you don’t want the BlueShirt shit heads to tag you.”
“No fear, Do-Right.” He stuck a hand into his tattered overcoat pocket to pull out his fuzzy beard attachment. “I’ve got my handy camo.”
“That thing makes you look like you’re wearing a raccoon on your face, Mitchell,” Sylvia told him. “You let any of those blue-shits get too close, they’ll see right through it.”
“Well, Syl. It’s better than my back-up Groucho glasses and big eyebrows disguise. Oh yeah, sometimes I wear an old Beatles wig.”
“Shit, man. You got one of those things? They’re priceless!”
Sylvia ‘s enthusiasm her warm coffee was tempered by the idea that Mitch probably didn’t care about much anymore as his life was draining from him with each Chemo treatment. He looked ten pounds hollower than he had the week before, once he’d gained twenty after leaving Unqutuck. His skin had returned to its color but was the consistency of dry parchment. She marveled at how chipper he’d seemed even through the filter of all the coughing and the surges of the pain he must have felt. She wondered what she would be thinking if it were her with the numbered days. Perhaps she would have a light humor, too; knowing she’d have her ultimate freedom from a life that had turned so grim. She loved Mitch all the more for his bravado and light-heartedness as she watched him sip his tea and churn out single little cough.
“Anyway,” Mitch said. “I had a ride there and to. My treatment nurse has a crush on me, I think.”
“I’m happy for you, Mitchell,” Sylvia said as she returned to her murky computer screen to squint at it. “I wish someone had a crush on me.”
“I do!” Hugh blurted.
“Me, too,” Mitch croaked nearly simultaneously as he seated himself in the squeaky chair in front of his HAM radio set-up.
“You guys don’t count.” Of course, that was a white lie in Mitch’s case. “You already know too much about me to be objective. Besides, you’ve already seen me naked.”
“Yeah,” Hugh said. “Covered in all that shale and prison sludge. Beauty!”
Mitch started to fiddle with the dials on his radio to try to find anyone else than that annoying guy from Toledo with the handle “Bird-Call.” For his voice, it was an appropriate one. Besides, Ohio had a history of being solid Red and he wasn’t sure he could trust him. For now, it was just more squelches, squeaks, and high, vacillating hums through his radio speakers. “No top forty today, I suppose,” he muttered to his set. He adjusted the tight, wool watch-cap hiding the scant clumps of hair still left like weeds in the desert of his bald head.
————————————————————————-
They all suddenly looked up as the door chuffed open against the concrete floor. “Oops. Sorry,” the intruder said. At least he wasn’t a BlueShirt.
“Uh, men’s room’s down the hall,” Hugh said, then turned to Mitch. “You forgot to lock it, Mitch,” he grumbled.
“My hands were full.”
“Piet sent me down here,” the guest said.
“Why? And who are you?” Sylvia asked suspiciously.
“Rob Bryant. Piet wanted me to remind you that there’s been a surge of BlueShirt activity around campus.”
“See, Groucho?” Hugh chummily accused Mitch. “You coulda been spotted... fake beard and all.”
“Thanks, Rob. Message received,” Sylvia said.
“He wants me to shuttle you to the safe house this afternoon.”
“Are we still that popular, to have a chauffeur?” Hugh said.
“Piet couldn’t come himself?” she said.
Robert twitched something between a smirk and a smile. “He’s out teaching.”
“Oh, yeah,” Hugh remembered. “American history to elementary and middle school kids. Actual American history.”
“Really?“ Mitch said as he fiddled with his radio’s tuner. “I heard teaching old American history was banned. Kenton calls that liberal stuff about Washington and Jefferson ‘fake history’.”
“Fucking jerk,” Hugh grumbled.
“Now it’s all about the present history, and all the wonderful things our Premier has done,” Sylvia said. “Like all life in America sprang up some time back in twenty-twenty-two, like Athena from the head of Zeus.”
“It’s Real-America now,” Hugh scoffed. “And it rose from the empty head of Alexander Kenton.”
“Yeah, well, fuck you Hugh, you seditious twerp,” she said facetiously. She added a coy wink to her comment, then looked at Robert. “Okay, just don’t stand there letting all the cold in. Come on in. You want a bottle of water, or something? I don’t know how frozen it is.”
“No thanks,” Robert said as he closed the door behind him. “What do you all do in here?”
“It’s our war room,” Hugh told him.
Sylvia motioned to an empty office chair next to her. “Go on. We don’t bite. Sit. We were just finishing up for the morning.” Robert sat in the chair. “This is the place where stuff is gonna start to happen. Didn’t Pietier tell you about us?”
“Well, I know you’re Sylvia Morales. And you just got out of a gulag.”
“‘Got out?’” Hugh said. “As if we ‘got out’ of school for the summer? No way, man. We were sprung by Neo- Publica.”
“Really? Sounds like no everyday thing,” Robert said.
Sylvia kept her gaze trained on him. “It wasn’t,” she said ruefully. “Anyway, it is Rob...Right? Bob? Robert?”
“Yeah, that’s right, any one of those.”
He had piqued her curiosity. “Bob,” she decided. She’d developed a second sight for things that lay behind facial expressions—a crucial sense, for survival in the gulag. He wasn’t a bad-looking sort. Beneath the wear of time and concern accented by a greying at the temples, he appeared mid-forty-ish; around as old as she. But even in this grim surrounding, where he sat partially lit in the soft fluctuation of low light from her desk lamp, he exuded a separate sadness. His sorrow hadn’t come across as the general malaise that trilled like a case of tinnitus within the normal routine of gloom among the ruins. This was a deeper sorrow from someplace specific. “How’d you come to know Piet?”
Robert attempted a solemn smile. “I was introduced to him by Bill Davis.”
“Bill Davis,” she thought, until it soon came to her. “Ah. Our attorney. Pretty decent guy—for a lawyer, I suppose.”
“He got me out of jail, before my sentence was up.”
“Sorta like what we just went through,” Mitch said. “Except our sentence would never be up...” he caught himself, “until we died,” he muttered forlornly, then coughed.
“Yeah,” Robert said. “What you went through sounds like hell on earth.”
“Nothing of this earth, I assure you,” Hugh said. “At least not the way it’s supposed to be.”
Sylvia lit a cigarette and vigorously shook out her match. She noticed Robert transfixed by the glow from its tip. “Um...how rude of me.” She extended the pack to him, scissored between her trembling right two remaining fingers. “You want one?”
“I don’t smoke, but thanks anyway.”
She replaced the pack next to her computer and stared at its crumpled package. “So, Bob,” she said distracted, “Piet can be a hard sell. How’d he let you into the Neo-Pubs?”
“Bill pushed for it. We were neighbors in Fairfield, so he knew me and my family. Uh, I was arrested by PRICE for a moment of madness, and my wife took the kids and ran. Bill knew they were fugitives and arranged for them to be sent by the Neo-Pubs to Cuba to be transported to relative safety in Brazil. That’s where the PRICE goons caught up with her and split my family up. Sent them away to various gulags.”
