Sudden Lockdown

by Amos Talshir

  “You don’t know when you’ll get another chance,” he said.

  “You think it’s okay? They won’t give me trouble over it?”

  “They like things clean here. Look how, despite the hell they’re putting us through, they’re keeping everything clean. There’s toilet paper, they rinse off the grass after they blow up heads. They like it clean.”

  “Will you look out for me?”

  “I’m becoming an expert on that when it comes to you,” Charlie said and sensed that he was managing to impress Veronica.

  She took off her yellow club scarf and passed it to him. Charlie opened it up like a partition between her and the interior of the restroom facility. She took off her sweatshirts and placed them on his shoulders, which served as a clothes hanger. She took off the shirt that had been against her skin, keeping her bra on. He tried not to stare at her breasts, concealed within the black bra. She splashed water from the sink into her armpits and onto her face and neck. Droplets of water reached him as well. She apologized, and he wiped his face with the edge of the scarf. The water was trickling down her flat stomach; once again, it was obvious to him that she got plenty of exercise. She took one of the items of clothing draped over his shoulder and toweled herself off. Then she put on her clothes again and was ready to depart. He gestured with his chin at the lower part of her body. She didn’t understand. Charlie said that maybe she should wash herself a bit down there as well. She was embarrassed, but he encouraged her.

  “You’ll feel better,” he said.

  Her body relaxing slightly from the tension, she looked around, realizing there were no people moving around the restroom area and that, in any case, she was hidden behind the improvised scarf partition. She pulled down her tights, lowering them to the sneakers she had not taken off. Charlie signaled her to take off her shoes. She kept her small panties on, waiting for his approval. He nodded. She pulled her shirt down toward her rear and shimmied out of her panties as well. Veronica filled her cupped hands with water from the sink and brought them down between her legs. Charlie looked the other way. She rinsed her rear again and again as well, drying it with her wet shirt. When she was done, she put on her underwear and pants. She let out a sigh of relief and smiled at Charlie in embarrassment.

  “Así me gusta a mí?” Charlie asked.

  “No, ‘Así me gusta a mí’ only comes out when I’m peeing. That’s actually not true,” she added, blushing. “It comes out when I’m doing something else, too.” She giggled suddenly.

  “Did you say Brigitte Bardot?” Veronica asked, and that was the second bell ringing in his ears since the world changed.

  “What I wouldn’t give for a clean pair of underwear,” she whispered.

  “I’m sorry. That might work out soon, too.”

  “Do you think they’ll hand out women’s underwear, if they’re that clean?”

  “I’m afraid that probably won’t happen.”

  14.

  Rose waved to Simon, who was climbing the stairs up the stand. He waved back at her, his long arm rising above the heads of the people around them. She was sitting by herself in the middle of a row of seats. He approached her, and she fell upon his neck with a hug and a kiss on the cheek.

  “I was waiting for you.” Tesoro, she said. Treasure, he understood.

  “How old are you?” he asked.

  “Eighteen.”

  “At first I thought you were a woman, when I saw you during your freedom run.” He sat down next to her.

  “Why?”

  “Because of the courage.”

  “To run naked?”

  “Because of the kiss.”

  “What about the kiss?”

  “It was a mature woman’s.”

  “Tasting of hot chocolate,” she chuckled.

  “When I saw you the next day, when that guy got shot in the head, I thought you were younger. Now I know you’re very young and don’t know how to take care of yourself. Are you sick?”

  “I don’t know. I’m cold and I’m hungry and I can’t sleep and I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

  “Don’t be scared. I brought you those snacks they gave us. You won’t be hungry.”

  “I’m afraid to die.”

  “No way are you going to die. I’m sure they went overboard in maintaining order, and it was just a glitch.”

  “Simon, you’re in more danger than those people who don’t even understand what’s going on.”

  “Why are you talking like that?”

  “Because you saved my life and I’m afraid they’re tracking you and you’re deluding yourself that you understand everything and you might get hurt.”

  “They won’t hurt me. I understand what they expect from me.”

  “Maybe it’s actually better not to understand. Then you have hope.”

  “You don’t need hope. You need to be satisfied with what you’ve got.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “And that’s what you think? That you have to be satisfied with what you’ve got?”

  “Yeah. There’s just too much. It’s all too much. No one enjoys what they have. They constantly want more instead of what they’ve got, because you no longer want what you already have, and then you complain about what you don’t have.”

  “You sound like them.”

  “I don’t know them.”

  “That’s the Others’ philosophy,” Rose said. “‘Entity minimizing,’ and that’s why they barely exist, and there’s no information on them. That’s all the intel we got from the outside. I’m scared. You’re suddenly scaring me too.”

  “I brought you food. I saw that you didn’t go down to get some.”

  “I’m not afraid of starving to death.”

  “Don’t be afraid of anything.”

  “You don’t know them.”

  “That’s exactly what I said.”

  “Right, you said it, but I mean you don’t know what they’re capable of.”

  She no longer looked like the brave woman who ran naked around the entire stadium. Her tan skin had turned gray and her lips were dry. He produced the thermos from his backpack and poured her the water he’d gotten from the bathroom taps.

  “No hot chocolate on the second date?” she asked.

  “Who don’t I know?”

  “The people who won’t hesitate to kill anyone who disrupts the peace.”

  “Who are they?”

  “We know what they are and we don’t know who they are, and that’s why we can’t get to them.”

  “Who’s we?” Simon asked.

  “Our resistance.”

  “It’s not that complicated, Rose. We’ll find out who they are and get to them. They just took advantage of an opportunity.”

  “Come see something that you visitors don’t understand.”

  Rose extended her hand to him and he gladly took it. She suggested he leave his backpack on her seat, but he refused. She asked him if he loved his backpack more than anything else.

  “Up till now I did,” Simon smiled.

  “Then what happened all of a sudden?”

  He returned her gaze and blushed. Rose pinched his chin. The two of them made their way between the seats, his blanket billowing from her shoulder as she rushed through. She started running when they reached the open sidelines near the pitch. He kept up with her easily.

  “Let’s pretend we’re jogging,” she suggested.

  “You’re not really in shape,” Simon said. “You almost collapsed when you did your run.”

  “That’s not true,” Rose defended herself while maintaining a steady rhythm of running breaths. “I was really nervous, it was cold and I was naked. I had hypothermia. Anyone would have collapsed, you included.”

  They entered the stret
ch of the jogging lane across from the stadium’s VIP boxes.

  “I wouldn’t have run naked,” Simon said.

  Rose didn’t laugh, and Simon realized his sense of humor was not very funny, or was inappropriate. He looked at Rose’s face, strained from running, and saw that she was tense. She was indeed breathing like an experienced runner, but her eyes were scanning the stand to their right with obvious excitement.

  “Pay attention to what’s on your right,” Rose said.

  Simon continued running beside her, thinking he should adopt these jogs while they were stuck in the stadium. They approached the VIP boxes. Once again, she told him to pay attention to the inhabitants of these boxes. Simon sensed Rose slowing down, though not because she was tired; he noticed her heels were still rising with every step she ran. She intended to give him time to see those sitting in the honorary seats. The moment they ran past the boxes, she reminded him to look carefully. They continued running until the nearest curve around the turf, and Rose cut into the grass and stopped.

  “Did you see?” she asked, breathing heavily.

  “Yeah, but I don’t know what I saw!”

  Rose began to perform stretches. Simon wasn’t sure either of them needed to stretch after such a short run. He realized she was simulating these exercises for the benefit of the sharpshooters examining them from the rooftops.

  “Simon,” she said, “you don’t recognize them, but the person in the main VIP box is our president. The president of the coalition, not the president of the soccer club. His Highness the All-Mighty Ruling Dictator, the Cruelest of the Cruel.”

  “That’s crazy. Your president is locked up in the stadium like the rest of us?”

  “You need to start getting this, Simon. Along with him are nearly all the major ministers in the Spanish Coalition government. They’re trapped in the stadium, just like us. Are you getting what I’m telling you?” Rose’s almond eyes, framed by her heavy curls, were wide open in fear. Drops of sweat, resulting from the exertion of running or from the pressure she was under, trickled down her round cheeks. Only fear could bring such sudden dryness to her wide lips. She looked at him, her slanted eyes resembling those of a trapped rabbit.

  Simon felt the impact like a soccer ball kicked straight at his chest. He had told his father that the situation was serious, but he hadn’t imagined to what degree. From now on, this was not some stadium where he was stuck with a band of hotheads who had seized control of some rabid soccer fans.

  “They locked them in here too, like they did with the rest of us?”

  “Simon, our entire government is locked up in this stadium. They’re sleeping like us, in the chairs of the VIP boxes. It’s a little more comfortable, but they’re stuck in here with us and don’t know what’s going on here and what’s going on outside. That means the Others are the ones trapping us here, not the government. Simon, do you realize what this means? This is a coup!”

  “Your entire government is stuck here with us?”

  “You’re starting to get it.”

  “Where are their security details? This whole famous order of yours was based on fear and Security Police personnel.”

  “That’s exactly it—they’ve disappeared. Simon, this is scary. All the security personnel disappeared from the VIP boxes, and the entire Security Police disappeared from the stadium sidelines before the lockdown. I realized that when no one ran to stop me while I was streaking.”

  “Let’s talk to them,” Simon suggested. He and Rose were standing across from the VIP boxes, looking at the people sitting inside.

  “With who?”

  “With the president.”

  “Do you want a bullet in the head?”

  “Not here, in front of the snipers. Let’s go to the restroom facility behind the VIP boxes. The president has to piss sometimes, too.”

  “You’re nuts.”

  “You think the security detail pisses for him?”

  “You’re making me laugh. I like it.”

  “I also saved you from the cold.”

  “You saved my life, Simon. Are you sure you’re only sixteen?”

  “I’m sixteen and four months.”

  “Was that a kind of funny too?”

  “I wasn’t trying to be funny. I’m used to being precise.”

  “What else are you used to?” Rose asked.

  “Swimming, and my technique of sleeping sitting up, all through my life.”

  “That’s what you’re used to? It’s like you were meant to sleep sitting up in a stadium,” Rose said.

  “I was born with a crack in my Scottie dog vertebra. That’s why I sleep sitting up.”

  “And you tell that to every girl you like?”

  “All the ones who streak in a stadium.”

  “That’s what I’m used to doing.” She laughed, and he was caught up in her charms.

  “Let’s go catch the president with his pants down,” Simon insisted.

  Rose wasn’t sure she understood Simon. Perhaps part of it was the remedial level at which he spoke her language. She had no idea what his Mediterranean language was, Greek or Italian or Arabic. In any case, there was something else about the way Simon treated things and occurrences—and not just the extreme ones. It was true, she thought, that the circumstances under which they had met were truly extreme: the stadium lockdown, her naked run for world freedom, and Simon being the only one among a hundred thousand people who had shown up to save her from freezing to death. But that wasn’t what made her feel that he was different. Who, at that age, keeps a thermos of hot chocolate in his backpack? There was also the way he’d poured the beverage for her and served it to her. And the composure he’d maintained as he’d taken care of her while she had lain there, exhausted—that was the composure of an adult, or at least someone who was… unusual. She couldn’t manage to provide an answer to her own question, but she had a gnawing suspicion that she would witness more unusual things in Simon’s behavior.

  Rose followed him as he headed for the VIP boxes. It was utterly silent behind the box doors. Rose expected to see people congregating there, but here as well, she and Simon realized they were facing a different situation. An unquestioned order characterized the scene. People were not walking around the area, even though there was no instruction, sign or directive telling them to avoid loitering in the vicinity. The security personnel who were the most common sight surrounding members of the regime had all disappeared.

  “It’s scary that there are no bodyguards here,” Rose said.

  “And if there were bodyguards?” Simon asked.

  “That would be scarier.”

  The door of one of the VIP boxes opened, and an elegant man, wearing a suit and a bow tie, emerged. The stubble on his unshaven face obscured a thin, well-groomed mustache gracing his upper lip. He was obviously embarrassed by his exposed circumstances without the barrier of his security detail. His raised hand, rubbing at his rough cheek, betrayed his discomfort when faced with Rose’s inquisitive look.

  “Good day to you, Minister of Health, sir,” Rose greeted him.

  He glanced around as if unused to such unmediated encounters, once again rubbing at the stubble masking his meticulous mustache.

  “These aren’t great days,” he whispered to Rose, trying to assess her intentions. “It’s been days since I could shave.”

  “That’s unpleasant. Almost a disaster,” Rose replied.

  Simon noted Rose’s skillful use of provocation. A tone of dismissal had filtered into her attitude toward the minister. Seemingly hidden, but there.

  “We find ourselves in the same boat, as they say,” the minister of health said. “Forced into it, more accurately.”

  “Minister, sir, ‘ship’ would be more accurate than ‘boat,’ or maybe even ‘aircraft carrier.’ There are a hundred thousand people here with you.”
>
  “Yes, definitely,” the minister mumbled, examining Rose with a gaze that transformed from apathetic and arrogant to interested and inquisitive.

  The minister ignored Simon’s presence for a reason that was familiar to Simon, the way that some men ignore their surroundings in the presence of a woman. Simon listened to the minister’s haughty speech and wondered how long the man in the wrinkled suit and the face demanding a shave around the affected mustache could continue playing the master.

  Simon had a game of his own, which he’d been playing since he had begun to notice the competition existing between men over women’s attention. He would try to assess the competitor in comparison to his father. To his son, Charlie was the ultimate man, the kind that Simon would like to be when he grew up. Simon knew his father wasn’t the best-educated man in the world, but he always made up for it with his kindness. His father treated every person with extreme courtesy, not just women. Charlie had a tendency to respect people’s opinions and wishes, and he always treated them very gently, with the same endearing gentleness he directed at the components of the engines he took apart. Even though his father was especially strong and unusually athletic, he never leveraged that advantage against other people. There was only a single time when Simon clearly remembered the sight of his father displaying unexpected force, in one particular situation: ever since Simon was a very young boy, every time news would arrive of an improvement in his medical condition, or when he improved on his swimming records, scored a goal or dunked a basket, Charlie would hoist his wife, Clara, up in his arms. It would begin with a mighty hug that nearly shattered her bones, making her laugh like a beautiful blonde baby. Charlie would spin around with her in his arms for several twirls, then hoist her up in the air with his muscular arms, flying her around his head while yelling, Did you see my boy, did you see my boy, countless times. Those were the only times he had heard his father yelling, and the last times when his mother had laughed.

  He had witnessed the collapse of his mother and father’s relationship. Even when he’d been very young, he’d already noticed that his father had stopped twirling his mother like a merry-go-round over his head. Sometimes, he tried to ask his father to hoist up his mother and scare her, until he’d put her down and hold her tightly and she’d grope his body happily, mock-hitting him. Then they began to argue, and little Simon watched them and thought they were arguing about him. Because they were always arguing in preparation for their sessions with the orthopedic surgeon, sitting frozen in his office and continuing to argue in the car when they left, with little Simon belted up in his special seat. When they noticed his intelligent eyes examining them, too late, they fell silent for the rest of the drive, and then kept it up for months. Only when Charlie returned him home after a long swim would Clara thank his father with a nod and a quick peck on Simon’s cheek, still maintaining her silence. Simon would give Charlie a goodbye kiss on the cheek, passing on the lavender aroma of Mom’s kiss and smelling Dad’s sea scent. Mom was lavender and Dad was sea. The scent of sea salt. Dad would breathe in the lavender from Simon’s cheek and a glint of yearning would alight in Charlie’s eyes. When he grew up, Simon thought that the issues with him had caused lavender and sea salt to part.