Strange Trades

by Paul Di Filippo

  DISPOSAL LOGS MISSING FROM GULF WAR

  CIA BLAMES ACCIDENTAL ERASURES

  He made an effort to focus on the smaller print.

  Just then the door laughed.

  Fuquan Fletcher was the Karuna’s coffee-bean roaster. A master at his craft, he was indispensable to the quality of the Karuna’s drinks, and thus responsible for much of its success.

  That single and singular virtue failed to compensate for the fact that he was an utter prick.

  At least in Thurman’s eyes. But not, he suspected, in his alone.

  Always dapperly dressed and impeccably groomed, the trim mustachioed Black man had no admirers more fervent and appreciative of his immense hypothetical charms than himself. He was a loud walking arrogant billboard for his own athletic, sexual, financial and terpsichorean prowess.

  “Ladies!” bellowed Fuquan from the door. “Show me a hot oven, and I’ll get right down to some sweaty work!”

  Returning to Thurman’s table, an unfazed Verity passed by her coworker. “Morning, Fuquan.”

  The man made as if to embrace her, a move Verity deftly eluded with a twist and a skip, all without spilling a drop of the drink on her tray.

  “Freestone! I got you pegged, girl! You’re one of them sex elves like I seen in a comic once! Show the world your pointy ears, girl! Let them puppies out to play! Then you and me will go into your fantasy world!”

  Thurman was highly embarrassed by this display. For the nth time, he pondered putting Fuquan in his place. Once he would have done it automatically. Visceral memories of R&R barroom brawls tweaked his flaccid muscles. But now he had neither the energy nor the ability.

  Verity was unfazed by the familiar routine. “Fuquan, you’d better cut the talk and get to work. We’re running low on Jamaican.”

  “One day you’re gonna give me some of your good stuff, Miss Peanut.”

  “Don’t count on it. Thurman, here’s those eggs I was talking about.”

  Moving irrepressibly on to other equally futile love conquests and bouts of braggadocio, Fuquan went behind the counter where Thurman could see him donning a neck-to-knee apron.

  “Don’t you ever get sick of him?”

  “Oh, he’s harmless. It’s the ones who don’t say anything you have to watch out for.”

  Thurman instantly felt that perhaps he was one of those suspiciously quiet ones, and fumbled for some sort of conversational tidbit, as Verity disburdened her tray onto the table.

  “Uh, how’s your dog doing?”

  Verity owned a long-haired dachshund (referred to by Fuquan as, of course, “Hairy Weenie”). “Slinky Dog is just fine. He goes out to stud next week. Slinky makes his girlfriends happy, and I make a little extra cash.”

  The mention of even canine stud duty saddened and embarrassed the unstudly afflicted Thurman. “Um, great, I guess.…”

  “Now, try these, Thur, and tell me what you think.”

  Before him, fluffy white-flecked yellow clouds of whipped and steam-cooked eggs seemed to float an inch off their plate. Thurman had never seen such ethereal scrambled eggs. Plainly, there was a component of antigravity to their recipe.

  Thurman forked some up and delivered them to his taste buds.

  There was not even any sensation of them resting on his tongue. The sweet creamy taste of the eggs seemed to suffuse directly into his bloodstream. Chewing was definitely superfluous.

  “These—these are the best eggs I’ve ever had!”

  Verity smiled and patted his shoulder. “Part of your regular order from now on, Thurman. Well get a little flesh back on those bones.”

  Thurman finished his eggs with gusto, as well as his usual plain bagel half and cappuccino (oh, all right: weakly flavored hot sugary milk). Feeling better than he had in months, he settled back to absorb the busy evolving scene around him.

  People-watching was Thurman’s main recreational activity these days. Cost nothing, and took little strength.

  Odd Vibe came in. A quiet and generally unsmiling Norwegian who bore the unfortunately twistable name of Otto Wibe, he was the Karuna’s baker.

  Thurman could hear Fuquan greet his backroom coworker.

  “Odd Vibe, my man! You sleep in those clothes or roll a bum and strip him?”

  “Fletcher, you go and sit on a biscotti, by gosh!”

  “Oh, sharp one, Oddy! We’ll have you playing the dozens yet!”

  Around eleven, Tibor “Chug’em” Gruntpat made his daily appearance. Chug’em was a sanitation worker, fiftyish and gnarled, just coming off shift. He had been up since about 3:00 a.m. Without a word, Buddy Cheetah—drummer for a struggling band called the Beagle Boys, who was working the counter with Verity—lined up four double-mochaccinos in front of the gray- haired muscular man, who knocked them back in a total of sixteen seconds. Then Chug’em left to sleep through the day.

  Others less and more memorable came and went, the latter category featuring SinSin Bang and Pepsi Scattergood from the Kwik Kuts salon three doors down the block. As usual, the brace of beauticians were impeccably trigged out. The Misses Mode O’Day. And, natch, their hairstyles had changed since last week.

  Nelumbo Nucifera, good-looking Italo-American boy who kept all the females happy with his tight T-shirts, came out from behind the counter to clear Thurman’s dish and refill his cup.

  “Thanks, Nello.”

  “Hey, want to hear a joke, man? This guy walks into a bar with an alligator on a leash.…”

  In the buttery sunlight after Nello’s departure, Thurman began to grow sleepy.

  And then the door’s chortles, sounding somehow lighter and more vibrant, announced Shenda Moore.

  Her arrival had the same effect on Thurman’s nerves as a Scud missile intersecting the Aegis defense system. He came instantly awake, his heart thumping to a salsa beat.

  Wasn’t she just so achingly damn beautiful?

  And wow!

  Peeking out of her open-toed shoes —

  Those Easter-egg nails!

  5.

  Money Comes

  The Tarbaby wanted to tango today!

  Shenda’s hasty departure from her apartment had set the tone for the rest of her morning. From one appointment to another she had raced. Suppliers and building contractors, City Hall and DEM, office supply stores and printshops, the homes of employees out on long-term sick leave. The odometer on her little green Jetta seemed to revolve madly like one of those movie time-machine displays as the decades whipped by. Shenda’s Day-Timer was thick as a slice of Sequoia, stuffed with loose business cards that took flight at the slightest provocation, making her feel like an utter idiot as she stooped to recover them under the noses of leering sneering straight-edge white guys in suits!

  (Whenever Shenda heard this putdown tone in her mental monologue, she would automatically pause, disengage the gears on the aggression machinery, and try to radiate a little human warmth, the way Titi Yaya had taught her when she was a little girl. The practice had been hard at first, gotten easier over the years—although the mental trick never ceased to be something she must consciously invoke as a counterweight to natural human impatience. This refusal to hate or impose false separations lay at the heart of Shenda’s personal MO, and at the heart of her vision for Karuna, Inc.)

  As she dashed about town, attending to all the daily hassles associated with running the expanding set of enterprises loosely linked under the umbrella of Karuna, Inc., Shenda felt a twinge of irreducible guilt.

  She had not taken Bullfinch for a walk in days. (That dream—) The dog was uncomplaining, but Shenda knew that he missed the exercise. Hell, so did she!

  If walking with Bullfinch pleased them both, then why hadn’t they done it in too long?

  Was her life becoming the kind of White Queen’s Race she had always derided in others?

  Was she forgetting what was really important in life?

  She hoped not. Natural optimism made her ascribe this unnaturally busy and stressful period to the fact
that now, after three hard years, Karuna, Inc., was really taking off.

  Maybe soon now she could even hire a helper!

  Stopped at the traffic light at the corner of Perimeter and Santa Barbara Streets, Shenda looked idly to her left and saw a big truck emblazoned with some kind of insect logo.

  Must be exterminators.…

  The light went green. Shenda wheeled right on Perimeter toward her final two stops before lunch. (Both stops had been planned to mix pleasure and business, one of Shenda’s survival tactics. At Kwik Kuts, she’d get her pedicure and instead of dishing dirt, discuss business. Then, at the Karuna, she’d lunch after tending to their affairs.)

  As she expertly threaded the traffic, she thought back to the beginnings of this whole unlikely scheme.

  Three years ago, she had been a business major fresh out of the university, temping in a series of dead-end jobs, unsure of the path before her. The what and why of her life were plain enough, but the how was shrouded in mystery. Then Titi Yaya had phoned, a day in advance of her standard weekly call.

  “Shen-Shen, dear.” Only Titi Yaya called her that old childhood name anymore. “You remember Titi Luce?”

  “Of course, of course. I saw her once when I was six. She visiting from Miami?”

  “Not anymore, dear. She’s dead. Nine days ago. I just got back.”

  “Oh boy.… Sorry to hear it, Titi.”

  “I know you are, dear. Now, pay attention. I can’t get out of the house today. Too much to make ready. So I need you to pick up a few things for the oro Ilé-Olofi ceremonies tonight. Seven white candles, a pigeon, eight coconuts, some cascarilla, Florida Water.…”

  Shenda scribbled dutifully, although she was not truthfully looking forward to attending the oro Ilé-Olofi. Titi Yaya and the other santeras would ask when she was at least going to take the Necklaces, embrace the Warriors—never mind making the saint!—and they would press upon her protective bracelets at the very least—the idé—which she would have to refuse, saying that she didn’t follow the Religion anymore, had never really done so since reaching adulthood. Unpleasantness would result.

  Titi Yaya finished her list. “And be here sharply at nine, dear. Oh, by the way: Luce left you a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Goodbye till nine.”

  The connection was severed on Titi Yaya’s end but not on Shenda’s, as she held the phone stupidly in her hand until the recorded operator’s voice came on.

  The first thing Shenda did was press the disconnect button on the handset, then dial the temp agency and resign.

  The second thing she did was walk (no car then) to the Karuna, where she could sit and have a coffee and think.

  In those days, the Karuna looked nothing like its current self. Didn’t even have the same name, but was known instead as the Corona Coffeehouse. Drab, dirty, dusty and disagreeable, it was mismanaged by absentee tax-finagling owners and patronized by shady types, the yuppies they preyed on, and a clique of arty poseurs.

  Liars and strivers and bores, oh my!

  Only a handful of the employees redeemed the joint. Folks glad to have a job and trying their best to overcome bad conditions.

  Sitting with a cup of acidic, burnt coffee, thinking alternately of the nameless yellow adopted dog back home in her tiny walk-up and the bequest so cavalierly dropped in her lap by her ever- surprising aunts, Shenda tried to imagine what she might do with the money, how best to put it to work.

  There came an unbidden moment then—a moment most in commensurate with the tawdry surroundings, a self-catalyzing timeless nanosecond Shenda would never forget—when the whole world seemed to blossom, to split open like a fruit, revealing the seeds of her whole future.

  Shenda was at the bank the next day.

  Depositing the bequest and using it as collateral, she took out a loan. With that money, she bought the Corona from owners eager to dump it cheap and write off the loss.

  Rechristening the place was easy. Somehow the sound-a-like new name surfaced, recalled from a college philosophy class.

  Shenda wasn’t quite sure what the exact definition of “karuna” was. But it had something to do with warmth and spaciousness, and it sounded suitably exotic. Plus, anyone who went looking for the old “Corona” would likely end up at the new “Karuna.”

  Firing the incompetent and surly employees had been positively pleasant. Shenda was not one to flinch from necessary triage. The girl could be positively brutal when brutal was called for. (She would have made a good nurse or general, and had in fact become a mixture of both.)

  Once the Karuna was running on a steady footing (about six months; guess those business courses were worth something after all), Shenda incorporated a holding company that also utilized the Karuna name.

  This parent company had but one purpose. Its short prospectus was perhaps unique in the history of capitalism. Shenda was very proud of it. She had written all of it herself.

  “Karuna, Inc., is a cooperative overseeing entity whose sole purpose is to facilitate and maximize the functioning of its subsidiaries through any ethical means available, including but not limited to group purchasing agreements; joint bargaining and sales forces; intersubsidiary loans and personnel exchanges; healthcare coordination; shared management, training and education; pooled charitable donations and grants; mutual information sharing; etc., etc.

  “A company wishing to become a subsidiary of Karuna, Inc., must first redefine its sole business mission to be the creation of environmentally responsible, non-exploitive, domestic-based, maximally creative jobs to be filled without prejudice or favoritism. The performance of all employees shall be regularly evaluated, partially on accomplishment of defined goals and partially on native abilities and attitudes of employees, with the latter considerations outweighing the former in cases requiring arbitration. While maximum product and service quality are to be always striven for, the primary goal of the subsidiaries shall always be the full employment of all workers meeting the qualifications of goodwill and exertion of individual levels of competence. It is to be hoped that the delivery of high-quality goods and services will be a by-product of such treatment.

  “Upon demonstration of such a redesign, a company will be admitted as a subsidiary, with all rights and obligations pertaining thereto, upon a positive vote of the Karuna, Inc., board.

  “Profit making is naturally encouraged. Each subsidiary shall pay a tenth of its profits to the parent corporation for the furtherance of the shared mission as outlined above.

  “All owners of subsidiaries become members of the board of Karuna, Inc., and at regular meetings—open also to all subsidiary employees and their relatives, as vested shareholders—the board members shall vote to determine any future corporate actions outside the stated scope of this document, or amendments thereto. A simple majority shall carry all votes. In the case of ties, the vote of the President (Shenda Moore, undersigned) shall be called on. The President may also veto any board decision in the best interests of Karuna, Inc.”

  Shenda wavered a little over that last bit. It sounded kinda dictatorial. (Especially since she really had two votes: one as the owner of the Karuna Koffeehouse, the first subsidiary, and one as president.)

  Hell! It was her idea, her money and her effort!

  Let anybody who wasn’t satisfied stage a coup!

  Smith and Hawken. Ben and Jerry’s. Tom’s of Maine. The Body Shop. Sure, they all tried to live up to some of the same principles Shenda had outlined in the formation of her company. But none of these others had as their primary mission the simple creation and sustainment of good jobs for those who needed them. (Perhaps the national figure who came closest to Shenda’s conception of how to treat people was Aaron Feuerstein, the owner of the fire-destroyed Maiden Mills in Massachusetts, who had maintained his idled help on a full payroll throughout reconstruction.)

  In each of those other companies, the ultimate emphasis was on the product, on making and selling it, grabbing market share. Whatever the company rh
etoric, when push came to shove, the workers drew the short straw.

  “Doing well by doing good” was their motto.

  “Doing good and maybe doing well” was Shenda’s.

  It was a real, although subtle, difference.

  (And in the end, there didn’t even seem to be any maybe about it. Loan paid off, house and car bought, the Karuna turning a nice monthly profit. Louie Kablooie! What more could you ask of a business plan?)

  Shenda didn’t really give a flying fuck about product. People were drowning in products, they bought too much too cheaply anyway. It didn’t take a genius to turn out quality goods. That part was simple.

  What took skill and talent and vision and general resourcefulness—qualities Shenda was a little surprised to find out she had in abundance—was promoting conditions that opened up satisfying, decent-paying vocational niches for everyone. Getting people into a harness that didn’t bind and having them all pull together, for the common good.

  General Shenda, jetting in her Jetta toward a pedicure and lunch.

  Never thought being a general might someday mean having to fight an actual war.

  6.

  Nailed

  Marmaduke Twigg adjusted the bib of his black rubber apron, smoothing the cord where it passed around the collar of his five-thousand-dollar suit. The long, butcher-style garment bore the PGL crest in the middle of the chest.

  Unlike the Masons and their aprons, the Phineas Gage League had adopted theirs for strictly practical reasons.

  The lovely expensive fabrics favored by the League members reacted so poorly to bloodstains!

  Confident he was looking his best, Twigg walked forward to the clustered PGL members who had arrived before him.

  They stood on a subway platform, lit by a single scanty light. The dusty station was a deserted one, off the maps, reachable only through a certain subbasement’s concealed door.

  Of course, a League member owned the building that included that subbasement.