Survivanoia

by Baroness Von Smith

  A low hum, like a refrigerator, was all that came from the engine compartment. The soft, almost plastic ker-chunk of gears when Daci shifted seemed erroneously loud in comparison. Outside, the broad tires made a sticky drone against the asphalt and Terri heard each car’s Doppler swish as Daci sped past them. She could smell Daci’s coffee, black, no cream, and feel each individual scale embossed into the leather to make it mimic rattlesnake. The ocean’s salty tang felt almost tangible against her pallet. Or was that saline from the engine?

  “Why don’t you tell anyone about this car? You know everyone who sees it thinks it’s a gas guzzling monstrosity. They hate you.”

  “They love to hate me. It’s good to be loved.” Daci’s voice sounded easier now.

  “If you told them this thing runs on salt water, you’d be a national hero overnight.”

  “Are you insane? I’d be disappeared! Troops from Ford and GM would be at my doorstep before the press conference ended.”

  “Nonsense. You could start a partnership and market them.”

  “You are so shamelessly optimistic. Besides, if I told everybody, it wouldn’t be any fun. That’s my little secret. Me, Arturo Rivera, and Bucky Fuller Auto. BFA will eventually have its day on the beach.”

  The car stopped silently and Terri heard the key click in the steering column, though she perceived no change in engine noise. She heard the bristle of Daci’s clothes against the textured seats.

  “I have to drop off these sample labels so Ali can decide which ones he likes. I’m partial to the plain ones with just the big S. You want to come in?”

  “I can’t see anything.”

  The briefest of pauses. “That’s your fault.”

  “I’d argue that it’s your fault. Or your COOs faults. But my larger point is that it won’t be any fun.”

  “Sure it will.”

  “It’s loud.”

  “Only the reverse osmosis sector. The flocculation tanks are quiet as a sheep herd. Plus, you love an accent, and we now boast twenty-three languages. We hired an engineer from Bosnia and the new data entry girl is off-the-boat Romanian.” Terri got the sense Daci simply didn’t want her left alone. Embarrassingly, she discovered she agreed.

  Inside the plant, the air was a perfect 72. Even from the lobby, Terri could hear the rhythmic, breathy pulse of pumps forcing water through the reverse osmosis membranes. She wondered if anyone else heard it, though even if they did they undoubtedly tuned it out within a few minutes.

  A receptionist whose bracelets jangled like a belly dancer and whose accent said India called Ali’s office, then told Daci and Terri to go on down.

  Ali, Terri knew from her visits to the plant before it was active, was slender and stooped and the color of a well-worn saddle. His English carried only the hint of an accent, Iranian. (Though he referred to himself as “Persian.”)

  “The reporters are calling again,” he complained. “There is a big concern as to what we are doing with the brine.”

  “So tell them we’re dumping it back into the ocean like every other de-sal plant in the world.”

  “But in fact we are not. And they don’t like to hear that we are. Why can we not tell them the truth?”

  Terri saw—or rather heard—an opportunity. “What’s the truth, exactly?”

  There was a pause, then Ali explained. “All the cars in the company fleet run on concentrated saline water.”

  “You’re shitting me.”

  He laughed at her expression. “In fact, no.” Another pause.

  “You can tell her,” said Daci.

  “Every employee gets a company car,” Ali explained. “We are required to drive them, in fact. From the acting president on down to the secretary. We store the saline and refuel out back.”

  “For free,” Daci added.

  “All your staff cars are Buckey Fuller Auto?”

  Daci confirmed this. “All the Survivanoia staff cars will be, too. And eventually, if the Aztecs were wrong and the world doesn’t end this year—”

  “Mayans?”

  “No, they said twenty-twelve. Anyway, eventually all the cars in California will be saline fueled. The trick is to make sure we have enough brine. That’s why we’re looking beyond water authority sales and into bottling water.”

  “But you’re telling the press that you’re dumping this horrible waste into the ocean.”

  “Of course. It’s free publicity when we announce that we’ve found a use for all that junk.”

  “Do you believe yourself to be insane?”

  “Of course.”

  “Alright. Then you’re not. Just checking.”

  “Of course.”

  Outside felt even hotter than before. “What time is it?” she asked as the tricked-out Hummer started silently. While her other senses were expanding, her sense of time seemed to have eloped with her sight.

  “Not quite ten. I’m guessing your appointment is soon?”

  Vexation cooled Daci’s voice.

  “Ten. Take Vista to Pacific, we’ll be fine.”

  “Before I take anything to anywhere, I want you to take these pills.”

  “Before I take the pills I want you to tell me how you’re going to get them distributed.”

  “I’m! Working! On it!”

  Terri’s chest tightened and her heart rate jumped. In their twenty five plus years of knowing each other, they had yelled at each other, seriously, honestly yelled, three times.

  She and Daci had always gone at things with this childish, tug-of-war approach, at first because they were actual petulant preteens, then later out of nostalgia, or perhaps because it amused them. All these years had taught Terri that she could light a fire under Daci’s ass just by initiating a heated, argumentative discussion.

  At least that had always been the case in the past. She wondered if heading up a corporation would change Daci. Not in the common way power corrupts people by spreading avarice, Daci had her own money so that was unlikely. But a more subtle change, a shifting in to accepting things and assuming they’d work themselves out eventually. This latent tendency of Daci’s had been a point of disagreement between the two women since college. Now it seemed to define Daci’s acquiescent attitude about the Flower Flu antidote.

  “Standard company approaches are clearly not providing an inroad,” Terri responded calm but firm. “You need—actively, right now—to use your ingenuity and resourcefulness to identify a different path, or define one yourself.”

  “You need—actively, right now—to take this pill before you get stomach cramps and a headache and start shitting out your own intestines! This isn’t a game, Ter.”

  The image, and her friends vehemence, frightened Terri to the point of raising goose bumps. “That’s cheap.” She heard her voice crack. “Scare tactics. Beneath you.”

  “It’s truth!”

  “It would take you ten minutes!” She spat back. “Just do it, for the love of fuck! And while you’re at it, drive this sheep in wolf’s clothing up Vista so that I can be on time to meet my client.” She folded her arms and fell back against the seat, her eyes aimed at where the light told her the window was.

  Daci took in a long slow stream of air and Terri swore she could hear Daci’s heartrate increase with the introduction of plentiful oxygen. She pushed the air through loose lips making a slight raspberry. “I hate you right now.”

  The transmission ker-chunked and the car moved backward.

  “Lookit,” Daci sighed. “There’s a car a little way down there in the parking lot. It’s a white Honda CRZ. I’m pretty sure it was a few cars behind us on the freeway.”

  “Is there anybody in it?”

  “I can’t tell from here, the windows are tinted.”

  “You think it’s following us?”<
br />
  “Guess we’ll find out.” Daci back her secret saline hybrid out of the space and zipped out of the lot. “So who is today’s client?”

  Terri laughed. “He’s suing his mother.”

  “For?”

  “Wrongful life.”

  “You mean conceiving him?”

  “I think I’ll approach it as not aborting him.”

  “That’s…interesting. Have you met him yet?”

  “Only on the phone.”

  “What kind of guy sues his mother for not aborting him?”

  “He claims to be unemployable, highly literate, and kleptomaniacal.”

  “And the mother?”

  “A porn star. And lesbian. Want to meet him?”

  “The porn star?”

  “The klepto. You can pretend you’re my clerk. Is that car behind us?”

  A pause then, “I don’t see it. Or…well…there are two white cars a ways back.”

  Daci went silent again and again Terri could feel the strange mental static she recognized as preoccupation. Probably her friend was squinting into her rearview. For the second time that morning, Terri really wished she could see. Her forehead tingled slightly and a headache stirred between her brows. Maybe she needed coffee? Or was this how Flower Flu progressed? Maybe this chess game with death in order to save the world wasn’t such a great idea.

  “Hey, doesn’t Rabi drive a Honda CRZ?” Daci startled Terri out of her reverie.

  “What? Oh, Rabi?” She paused then lied. “I wouldn’t know.”

  “He didn’t stop calling you, did he?”

  “Once in a while.”

  “You’ve been broken up less than a month. What exactly qualifies as once in a while?”

  “Like, twice a week.” Terri could feel a grin spreading across her face involuntarily. Just like in high school. How embarrassing.

  “I don’t understand why you dumped him.”

  “Neither does he. I’m not sure he understands that I dumped him.”

  “So why did you?”

  Terri only sighed in response.

  “He’s a good man,” Daci opined. “He accepts your horrible work schedule, and contends with your—”

  “He’s not very motivated.”

  “He owns a twenty-four hour store! A middle-eastern guy with a convenience store may not be very creative, but it’s a lot of work.”

  “But that’s all he does.”

  “I guess it’s tough to fit the revolution in around his sixteen hour days.”

  Terri sighed again. This was an old argument. Another example of Daci’s complacency, a trait Rabi shared with her friend and which Daci had defended him on many times in the past. “I like to think,” Terri snapped, “that if I were from some war torn country and made a bunch of money that I’d do something. Make some change in my homeland.”

  “He’s a U. S. citizen. This is his homeland.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Just what is it you want him to do? Maybe he should go over to his Jewish friend’s house and set himself on fire?”

  “Rabi doesn’t have any Jewish friends.”

  “Maurice.”

  “He thinks Maurice is French. But if Maurice were part of the Israeli army, or the president of Israel—”

  “It’s Prime Minister.”

  “Whatever! If he had influence I’d support Rabi showing up with a bag of oily rags and a lighter, okay?”

  “You’re sick.” But she could hear the touch of humor in Daci’s voice.

  Usually, this marked the watershed of their arguments, the point where one of them burst into laughter and the other followed suit. But today she couldn’t verify Daci’s grin, wasn’t certain. Fuck, her lack of visual clues made a mess of everything.

  “Besides,” Daci suddenly expounded, “he works his ass off, he brought his parents and his brothers here, and he loves you. What more do you want from a man?”

  Terri held her tongue. In high school, Daci had been unaccountably pro-Israeli, so Terri found it highly ironic that here Daci was defending her Palestinian ex-boyfriend. And defending him for being apolitical.

  Politics had been so important to both of them in college. But then came that bizarre trip Daci’s father had taken her on after graduation, where she’d played with warlord gangsters while her father stole root stock and vine cuttings. So much exposure to such ill-gotten power. And violence. It must affect people, impress things upon them. Daci had come back much quieter about political events, much less certain of her once vehemently held opinions.

  The women had been girls then, both been too young to appreciate the ramifications of that trip, and once they’d gotten older and wiser, Daci never seemed to want to discuss it. It made her uncomfortable and apologetic, like the sex-heavy first film of a now-famous actress. Terri supposed this wasn’t a good time to exhume the subject, though she was sorely tempted.

  “I think you broke up with him because of the whole kid thing, anyway,” Daci said after a lull. “You’ve convinced yourself it’s this big political—”

  “The personal is political.”

  “He wants kids and you don’t, where’s the politics?”

  “My career is very political. Kids will get in the way of that.”

  Daci made a jeering sound. “Get a nanny like everyone else. You want to talk politics? Only stupid people are breeding. You have an opportunity to tip the balance and you’re squandering it.”

  “Then why don’t you have kids!”

  Daci must have appreciated Terri’s tone, because she reverted topics.

  “Do you know how disappointed Rabi is going to be if you die from Flower Flu?”

  “Possibly enough to come kill you since it will be your fault. Are we there yet?”

  “If you’d taken the pills you’d know!” Her friend’s tone held less humor and more frustration. “But yes, we are almost there. Just need to park.”

  “Come up with a solution yet? A plan?”

  “No, I’ve been too busy arguing with a crazy person.”

  “Well, when in Sane….”

  But her cheer and cleverness were pushed from her along with her breath when she overcompensated while getting out of the Hummer. She sprawled to the hot pavement. Lay there for a long moment wanting to cry like a child spilled from her bicycle. Unhurt if she discounted her scraped hands and knee but utterly humiliated. And scared.

  How long could she maintain this vigil? Literally. There was a tipping point. After twelve hours, even the vaccine was no use.

  It was ten o’clock now, that meant three hours had passed since she’d discovered her blindness. She’d gone to bed at midnight, though, so it could have begun as long as nine hours ago. So she had only a few more hours before the churnings began in her belly and the only thing anybody could do was give her morphine.

  But for most people, pain relief was the only thing anybody could do, period. Most people didn’t have a secret vaccination source. This truth restored her conviction.

  “You’re missing quite a view,” Daci told her.

  “Very funny. Help me up.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Venice beach could always be counted onto be cooler than the rest of Los Angeles. Daci attributed that as much to the view as the water, all those guys working out on the sand like it was a gym, and the surfers with their killer tats and fitted wetsuits.

  “Why do you think I keep my office here?” Terri handed Daci the key, and Daci unlocked the rear door of her building, which sat right on the sand. Her office window, on the second floor, overlooked famous Muscle Beach. Clientele came in through the 17th Street entrance and contended with the hyper-efficient Isabelle. Terri loved her tesettur-hijab clad secretary as much for her beyond-sty
lish attire (the scarf always matched the outfit) as for the woman’s complete inability to be intimidated by anyone ever.

  Terri sat behind her desk, phoned Isabelle to let her know she’d arrived. She slid on a pair of sunglasses. “I’ll tell him I’m staving a migraine.”

  “Shouldda’ taken the pills,” Daci sing-songed. Her new tactic seemed to be the feigning of indifference. “Want me to go get him?”

  “Yeah, go out and meet him, and have Isabelle call me and tell me what he looks like.”

  Moments later, Terri’s office phone gave its soft electronic purr, and Isabelle’s Turkish accent told her, “Man is tall, skinny, red haired, and with big blue eyes. Scruffy but not in scary way. Kee-yute. And young. Twen’y, maybe twen’y five. Pale! Like cheese. But has most coo-el tat-wo. Is tree-D! Ask to see.”

  Daci said from the doorframe, “Isabelle’s got him signing preliminary paperwork. She’s absolutely entranced by his tattoo. It’s like one of those 3D images, you know?” She sounded delighted.

  “Magic Eye?”

  “Yeah, those.”

  Terri laughed at her friend. “You could never see those when we were kids.”

  “I still can’t. Isabelle told me what it is.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’m not saying. You should have taken the pills, you could see for yourself. He’s also reading Stand Still like the Humming Bird. A signed copy.”

  “Henry Miller?”

  “Yes, signed by him and by Kenneth Patchen.”

  “Wow. Well,” Terri aimed her face at the direction of the door, “he did say he was overly literate.”

  “Ms. Tehzan?” Terri felt her client’s substance, tall and lean—she could perceive it. Maybe the shadow that he formed? Strange to interpret the world this way, so viscerally. She analyzed things, distrusted her instincts unless they could be validated by some sort of external data.

  Eddie moved toward her, but Daci intercepted him, shooed him into a seat.

  “Your assistant told me you’re about to have a horrible headache? If another time is better, we can reschedule, that’s fine.” His words sounded earnest, calm and without undo apology. They were also kissed by an accent.