Azaleas Don't Bloom Here

by Frank Klus

  “How close are they?”

  “Colderon missed them by less than thirty minutes. Fortunately, they’re looking for the wrong vehicle. Ray call you?”

  Ev nodded, and sat down on the couch, drink in hand. “I let him know about security issues. He knows how to handle them. The real question is why we didn’t know ahead of time.” He was staring at Gino. “She makes a pretty good campaign contribution. I’d hate to let her down.”

  Gino downed his drink. He pursed his lips and set his glass down in the bar sink. “Gotta go kick some ass, boss.”

  They all held their glasses aloft. “What should we drink to?” Stuart Everson said, playfully. “I know—may things always stay this great!” The four of them acknowledged the sentiment and downed their wine glasses.

  As the setting sun dipped below the Fortress walls, Eugene reflected on the possibility of living here one day. He knew Stu liked him. Stu even hinted that one day this could be his new home. With lovely Catherine at his side, Eugene stared across the lush landscape, drinking in the nectar of the azaleas. He turned to his wife, glowing with a warm smile, and felt these days would never end. Even when he went home he knew one day he’d be back for good. He glanced at Stu and his wife, who were relaxing as they watched the orange-splashed speckle of the park across from them.

  “Something isn’t it?” Stu said, watching the colors of the setting sun. “It makes everything worthwhile.”

  Then the air conditioning suddenly shut off.

  “Generator, honey,” Mrs. Everson said.

  Stu looked over at Eugene. “Fuel must be running low. I better check on it.”

  Pamela’s phone rang. “Yes, Ray. What is it?” Eugene’s ears bristled. He turned toward her and watched her mouth open in a look of surprise.

  “Hogs?”

  (Pause) “Yes, I know what to do…. How far?”

  (Pause) “Okay, we’ll turn off at Page Street.”

  (Pause) “Yeah, I got it. We’ll wait for you there.”

  She hung up. Eugene gave her a look. “The Squad’s on to us,” she said, trying to look cheerful.

  “Christ.”

  “Don’t worry, Eugene. They’re looking for our old car, with different plates from a different state. We’ll lose them.” Both were silent while Pamela reflected on the new circumstances. Looks like Ray and Cassandra will finally have a chance to earn their keep.

  “What did you mean by hogs?” Eugene said.

  “The Hogs. They’re ex-blues; really vicious. We may have to do something to slow them down. They’re about ten minutes behind. Turn right about two miles ahead, and increase your speed a bit. That’s it. Not too much. We don’t want to attract unneeded attention. Good.”

  Eugene turned off onto a side road and Pamela told him to keep going at the speed limit of forty.

  “Ray, it’s Pamela. We’re on Page Street, traveling east. Let me know where the Hogs go.”

  Ray grabbed a map, looking for an alternative route to take. The Hogs were out of sight. They didn’t want them to think they were being followed.

  “Pamela, Ray. I’m not sure where the Hogs are. We’ll meet you at the rendezvous point.”

  Ray spotted Pamela’s car and parked behind her.

  “It looks like we lost them,” Ray said, “but they may double back this way. According to the map, we’re in Page. Let’s hope there’s a motel here where we can hide out for a while.”

  Then, unexpectedly, they heard the sounds of motorcycle engines. The Hogs were coming. They quickly ducked into their cars and waited for them to go by.

  “We better find that motel and lay low for a while,” Ray said.

  Pamela glanced over to Eugene. He looked straight ahead; scared.

  Chapter 15:

  The Face of the Devil

  “Tell me how much you love me,” Catherine said, playfully.

  Catherine was in a sexy negligée, flirting with her husband. He smiled as he tenderly embraced her. She caressed his scrotum, arousing him. They kissed passionately, and Eugene drank in all the love she had for him. He closed his eyes, fell into her arms, and passionately kissed her. When their lips parted, and his eyes opened, he stared into the face of Jaydan Casimir. All he saw were gleaming white teeth surrounded by rotting flesh.

  Casimir leered at him with an evil grin. “I have your wife,” he said, and then laughed. He grabbed Eugene’s head and forced his lips to his own. Eugene fought and moaned, but Jaydan’s grip was too strong. Finally, he pushed him away and stared at him, grinning broadly, with worms coming out of his putrefying lips. “Now, I have you too.”

  Eugene screamed in terror, but Jaydan still had his arms around his head, laughing. He tried to get away, screaming until the grip lessened and became more tender.

  “Eugene, what’s wrong? Please, talk to me.”

  He was sitting in the middle of the motel room floor. His hands were clasped behind his head, slumped down, rocking back and forth, and acting as if he’d lost his mind.

  Then suddenly he stopped bawling and looked up at her. “I’m sorry, Pamela. I must have had a nightmare. I’ll be all right.”

  She helped him up to his bed. He seemed calmer as he turned to her in embarrassment, and then stood up and began walking around his room. “Everything is gone,” flicking his arm this way and that way. “It’s all gone: my wife, my job, my family; everyone and everything that meant anything to me. They’re all gone.”

  He stopped and stared at Pamela with a frightening look on his face. “But that’s not the worst of it. Was it ever real? Was it all a lie? Was I just deceiving myself about everything?”

  Pamela just stared at him.

  Eugene paused and looked down as if searching his mind. Then he looked up at Pamela again. “You must think I’m crazy. I loved my wife, but I started to hate her when she started drinking heavily.” He started to cover his face and looked away. “Oh God, I started to hate her. What a selfish prick. I didn’t understand, maybe I didn’t want to understand.” Eugene was sobbing heavily at this point. “I tried to get her to go to AA. She wasn’t an alcoholic. Why didn’t I realize that? Something was clearly happening to her, but she couldn’t tell me. She couldn’t tell me because I think she knew I wouldn’t understand, that I wasn’t ready to. I was selfish, Pamela. I wanted my dream girl back—for my own pleasure. I couldn’t or didn’t want to pierce the veil Catherine put between us. I didn’t want to see what was behind it. I only wanted what pleased me.”

  Pamela rushed over to him and put her arm around his shoulders. “Gene, it’s understandable. Let it go, sweetheart. Don’t let it eat you up.”

  “But it does. And it isn’t just Catherine. It’s worse still. Every day I would curse the neighborhoods I passed through, but it was my own work that helped create them. I got them into sex, drugs, and gambling. I set up the books for them. I’d suggest things like life enhancement activities. I’d provide the accounting categories for them that made these activities seem perfectly legitimate without some CEO having to refer to them as they really are. He wouldn’t have to sully himself with what he was actually doing.”

  Eugene looked up at Pamela with sad eyes as if seeking forgiveness while admitting his sins. “I was offered a promotion—the very thing I wanted most of all—and I would have taken it too. You know what it was? I’d be the number two man in the company. I would have a house in the Fortress. I could watch the azaleas bloom. All I had to do was lead the country into further ruin. And I would have taken the job too. Christ, Pamela, the very thing that gave my life meaning, destroyed it for everyone else. Now my life is gone too, and I don’t know how to replace it. I know New America doesn’t have these problems, but I think I’ve lost my soul.”

  Pamela looked on in silent anguish.

  “It was all a lie. The whole world…my whole world was disintegrating, and all I could think of was that damn promotion, a home in the fortress, and lovely, beautiful Catherine. I didn’t care about anyone or anything else. I di
dn’t care, Pamela.” He began sobbing openly as he sat back on the bed, covering his face in shame.

  Then he stopped crying, turned to her, red-faced and tear-stained with goggled eyes. He stood up as if to make a grand announcement. Looking at her, now sorrowfully, he spoke with a raised voice. “I WANT MY WORLD BACK! I don’t want to go anywhere else.” Then he crumbled to the floor again, his back leaning against the bed, the palms of his hands against his forehead, elbows against his knees, and crying. “I can’t take it anymore, Pamela. Prison, Hell House, Hogs. When does it end? I can’t find meaning in my life anymore. I’m an empty shell. I hate myself, but I want that mad, decadent life back again. I want my naiveté back. I want my ignorance back. I want sober, lovely Catherine back. I want to feel good again.”

  Pamela knelt down beside him, putting her arm around him and hugging him tightly, crying as well.

  “I’m dead, aren’t I? I mean spiritually dead. I can’t have it back and I shouldn’t want it back. I don’t want to be selfish old Gene. I don’t want to use people for my own comfort, but there is nothing else for me. Maybe I should just let them change me. Maybe I could stand the pain—others did. I’d fit in. They could make me forget Zinney. Then they’d never fear I’m going to start some revolution.”

  Eugene continued to look at Pamela wearing a somber expression. “They could make me forget Catherine. I wouldn’t have to face the pain of guilt or loss. I could have that promotion. I could fall in love again. This time, have a family of my own. Life would be good. I wouldn’t feel guilty about what I was doing to others. I wouldn’t even care. Let’s go back, Pamela. I could call Dennis up and tell him I’ll take Hell House. I’d cooperate. They wouldn’t have to beat me.”

  Pamela looked frightened, shaking her head sideways with a crimsoned face, listening to Eugene’s mad attempts to find happiness in a dead world. “Gene, listen to me,” holding him tight while helping him up, and sitting him down in a chair. She kept her eye on him, afraid his madness would get worse, while grabbing another chair, and pulling it over to him.

  “I know how you feel. This isn’t a dumb cliché. I really do know how you feel, but I tell you this, Gene. There is a better world waiting for you.”

  Eugene looked downcast. “I can’t accept it. I’ve made up my mind. I want to go back.”

  “Gene, you don’t understand. The world you know is dead.”

  “But my father and mother, and my brother Bo—they’re still there. And they’re real; they’re alive. They aren’t dead to me or anyone else.”

  “Gene, listen to me. I promised your mother something that I’m now going to violate because I believe she really wants you to know. Your father hasn’t had any real work in months. Haven’t you noticed the neighborhood? No one fixes the potholes or drains the town swamp anymore. People aren’t fixing up their homes. Weeds grow in many yards—your parents’ yard. Your father needed help from your Uncle John. Soon that help will dwindle.”

  Eugene was puzzled. “But you never met my parents.”

  “Yes, I did. I met them before I met you. When Ray called me and told me you needed to escape—he also told me about your parents. He was really worried about them. I called your mother up, and she invited me over. We talked. Oh, Gene, she’s just like you are now. She yearns for the life that is dead now. She couldn’t bear leaving her home because in her own mind it’s still the grand place she remembered when she fell in love with your father. Intellectually, she sees the deterioration, but it was the world of her youth that gave her pleasure. She can’t separate herself from that world. She and your father cling to it like a life preserver.”

  Eugene looked at Pamela with a curious and puzzling visage. “I never really noticed that about the old neighborhood. It still felt vibrant. It still felt like home.”

  “Do any of your childhood friends still live there?”

  “No. They all moved away.”

  “Do you know the neighbors?”

  “Not really.”

  “Then it really isn’t home anymore. You can’t let go of the past and neither can your parents, even though it’s eating all of you up inside. You don’t know anything better, so you cling to what always felt good before.”

  “I believe it’s more than that, Pamela. I understand what you’re saying, but it’s more than that. Whatever we destroyed, we can bring it back. The conservatives do make one good point. People have to take responsibility for their own lives. I could take that job, and then move my parents to a better place. They could move into my neighborhood. I could help dad find new markets. There is much I can do.”

  “It won’t work. You see, honey, it’s about more than taking responsibility for our own lives. We all share in the same problems. How long would that job last? How much can you squeeze out of people who have next to nothing? No matter what cute name you give to crap, it still amounts to the same thing. The well is running dry, Gene. If you aren’t producing something that makes the world a better place, it will become a worse one. If one suffers, we all suffer. Do you remember that poem by John Donne?”

  ‘No man is an island, entire of itself…. Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’

  “Do you remember that, Gene?”

  He nodded.

  “Old America is running out of time. As more people become poor and unemployed there are fewer dollars to buy things. When they’ve spent their last dollar on women, booze, and drugs there won’t be anything left. The rich can just look for new opportunities somewhere else, but even that won’t last much longer. They devour everything they touch. When it’s all gone, they’re done for too. Gene, this world is dead. No amount of personal responsibility is ever going to change that.”

  Eugene’s lips began to quiver, but he listened.

  “Your father failed, not because of anything he did or didn’t do, but because his clients failed. His clients failed because their customers failed. Their customers failed because their employers failed. It is a cycle of failure because this thing—I don’t know—corporatism, or whatever free enterprise got twisted into, is a failure. The New World has a better way. Hold on, Gene. We’ll get there.”

  The news of his father’s disintegrating business struck him hard. “Then why didn’t he come with me? Why didn’t they want to come?”

  “Your father is a proud man. As long as he felt he could endure, he wouldn’t leave. To leave would be to give up, and your mother and father just couldn’t do that. It isn’t in their nature. Your father believes in responsibility, and that means never giving up. He’s blinded by the fact that there’s nothing left to give up. His clients are all suffering; therefore, he suffers.

  “It’s the same with your brother, Bo. He’s supposed to set an example for you. He works sixteen hour days—sometimes twenty—just to stay ahead of the game. Soon, it won’t be enough. But the thought of giving up is so repulsive to him that he won’t do it until his world comes crashing down on him.

  “We’re all in this together, Gene. It’s just like John Donne says…‘No man is an island’. What happens to one of us affects all of us. Personal responsibility isn’t enough. We live in the same stink we create for others. The rich and powerful try to wall themselves off from it, but it won’t last. Utility companies are shutting down for want of customers. They shut down; even the rich won’t have electricity. Oh sure, they could build their own generators, but where would the fuel come from? Fuel distribution is dwindling because of fewer customers. There’s no money in it anymore. The rich are being consumed by their own greed. Nothing it touches will last; not even the Fortress. Those azaleas you mentioned—they have a dark side. They’re highly toxic. Just like your world. You can wall off yourself from all the rot, but you get consumed by it as well. The beauty of azaleas only disguise the rot.”

  “So even if I could have my old life back, I’d lose it anyway?”

  “Yes, dear. H
ell House is the totalitarian answer to keeping people in line, but the system has failed all of us. All it can do is rub our nose in the stink and make us believe it’s the nectar of the azaleas.”

  Eugene let out a laugh through his sorrowful countenance.

  “There is a future, dear. It’s where we’re going. In time your family will join you. When the realization that there is nothing left to hold onto hits home, they’ll come. Your father hinted at that when you last talked to him. Just be strong. As bad as everything seems now, it-will-get-better. You must believe me. You must go on. We will endure. We will survive. WE-WILL-GO-ON.”

  Chapter 16:

  Stirrings

  Sandy began to stir. She started kicking her feet and talking in her sleep. “No, no! Let me go!”

  Casimir stirred and woke up to the kicking. Sandy quieted for a time and Casimir rolled over. Then, after a few minutes, the kicking started again.

  “FERNANDO!” She sat up in the bed with her mouth agape.

  Casimir jumped up and reached over to his wife. “Dear, are you all right?”

  Sandy was panting. She reached out to her husband and hugged him.

  “There, there now. It was just a bad dream,” he said. Sandy was crying. Her breathing was brisk and shallow, and her heart was racing, gradually calming.

  “It was so real. I was in some kind of hospital and I think this doctor was giving me electro-shock therapy. The pain seemed so real. I never had a dream like this before.”

  Jaydan frowned.

  Dennis’s phone rang. “Hello.”

  “It’s Colderon.”

  “Do you have them?”

  “Well, we tracked them to a motel off the interstate and confirmed that Pamela and Eugene were there. Then we lost them. We did confirm they’re heading to New America, but we were too far behind them. We doubled back to some country road. It was about the only thing around in this good for nothing place. We cruised up and down and couldn’t find them. I think they gave us false plates.”