by H. A. Swain
“Dammit,” I whisper and slow myself down. “Hey, Jude. What’s up?” I do my best to look normal even though my stomach’s in my throat.
Jude scowls at me from the driver seat of his little electric car idling in the aisle. “Someone’s here to see you.”
“Who?” I ask, hand pressed against my chest to keep my heart from leaping out because no one comes to the warehouse unless there’s bad news or you’re in trouble.
“How should I know?“he grouches at me. “Two women from the city. I got a ping to send you up to the main office, that’s all I know.” He scrunches his face like the whole ordeal is giving him indigestion.
My heart pounds and my head spins. Could they have tracked my signal or used voice recognition even though Veronica says the audio was messed up? Did someone recognize me from the video? Or did someone at the concert squeal? Can I deny it? After all, my face was always hidden. At the very least, can I protect Dorian if they can finger me?
“Get in,” Jude demands. “The quicker you get to the office, the quicker you’re back on the floor and the less our times suck today. I don’t have to tell you that corporate’s been breathing down my neck for better times, do I?”
“No,” I say, resigned. It’s his favorite threat. We don’t make our times and A.N.T.s will replace us all. “Guess I have to face the music,” I say, then laugh at my own dumb pun as I climb in beside him.
We speed off through the aisles as everyone floods back onto the floor, eyes wide as we pass by, no doubt wondering why I’m being hauled off by our boss. Jude takes a sharp left, sending me sliding across the seat. I stop myself from crashing into him. Then he stops short next to the office. I brace myself against the dash.
He turns to me and waits. I know the procedure for unsanctioned breaks. I take out my earbud then unstrap my HandHeld. He overrides the system to program in an additional tenner. “Make this snappy, would you?”
“Like this?” I try to snap my fingers but they’re too shaky at the thought of who’s behind the office door.
“No,” Jude says because he’s devoid of humor. “I mean take care of it in a hurry. I need your times to up the average. With Brie off the shift, we’re sucking bad.”
“Bring her back,” I tell him.
He shrugs. “You know the rules,” he says and takes off.
“Well, well, well, if it isn’t Zimri Robinson!”
I turn to see Medgers in her security guard uniform step out from the shadow by Jude’s office door and I know things must be bad. She’s had it in for my family ever since my mom skipped bail and never returned. Over the years, she’s hit Nonda with every PODPlex infraction she can muster. Her favorite accusation is “improper use of company property.” Hang your wash out the POD window to dry—improper use of company property. Plant a patch of mint and basil in the dirt behind your building—improper use of company property. Paint your walls yellow to bring a little sunshine into your life—improper use of company property. And yes, those are all infractions Nonda has received. Not that she cares. We still sip fresh mint tea in our yellow POD while the laundry flaps in the breeze.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“Don’t play dumb,” Medgers says then grabs my elbow and yanks me into the office.
Inside, two women in fancy suits sit at the table. They motion for me to take a seat across from them. “I’m Private Detective Smythe,” the one with dark brown hair says and holds out her hand, which I cautiously shake. “And this is my associate, Detective Beauregarde.” The blonde nods then looks down at her screen, exposing black roots at her skull.
Smythe smiles, not really all that friendly. “We’re here to investigate Project Calliope.”
I blink. Then blink again. They wait. “Project Calliope?” I say slowly. They nod. My heart slows down and I ask, “What’s that?”
Medgers snorts from her post slouched against the wall and gives me a nasty look.
Beauregarde says, “Are you currently involved with Project Calliope?”
“Not that I know of. Is that a Corp X thing?”
“Do you recognize this person?” Smythe shows me a picture of a pretty woman in her early twenties with blond hair, gray-green eyes, and a funny turned-up nose. “She used to work here, seven or eight years ago maybe.”
“I’m only sixteen,” I say. “I don’t know what was going on here that long ago.”
“What do you know about Harold Chanson and Chanson Industries?” Smythe asks.
“The music guy?” I say.
They nod.
“He’s married to Libellule and has a big arena in the City and he owns all music.” And will zap your brain if you cross him, I think to myself.
Smythe and Beauregarde both chuckle. Then Smythe looks over her shoulder at Medgers. “Why is she here?” she asks, pointing to me.
“Ask her about making music,” Medgers says. A trickle of cold sweat drips down under my arm but I keep my face placid.
Smythe rolls her eyes as she turns back to me. “Do you make a lot of music?”
“Do I?” I ask with as much innocence as I can muster. “Does singing to myself count?”
Beauregarde sighs, miffed. “Do you have a band?”
“No.”
“Does anybody that you know?” she asks.
“Nobody that I know,” I say with complete honesty and a suppressed grin.
“Have you ever played copyrighted music for which you were paid?” Smythe asks.
“Honestly, ma’am…” I scoot way back in the chair so my feet don’t touch the floor. I might be sixteen, but I can look twelve if I try. “I wouldn’t know how to do something like that.”
“Has Calliope Bontempi ever helped you put on a concert?”
“I don’t know who that is,” I tell them.
“This is Calliope Bontempi,” Smythe says and shows me the pix of the green-eyed girl again.
I shake my head. “Never met her.”
“You little liar,” Medgers hisses. “She was friends with your mother. They played music together!”
“That’s not true,” I say.
“Yes, it is,” she insists. “And after your mother got arrested, Calliope skipped town.”
Every time my life intersects with Medgers, she kicks up my mom’s past trangressions like radioactive dust.
“That was years ago. I was a little kid. Then my father died,” I tell Smythe and Beauregarde. “I was only eleven.”
Smythe cringes.
“And she put on a show and people paid her,” Medgers adds.
“Is that true?” Beauregarde asks.
“Not exactly,” I explain. “My mother was already gone when my father died.” I bow my head, hoping to play to their sympathy or disgust. “So my grandmother was working double shifts to pay for his funeral and SQEWL for me until I could work at the factory when I turned fifteen. I sang after his funeral because I was sad. Then, separately, people helped my grandmother financially. Is that illegal?”
Beauregard puts hands on her hips and stares at me like she isn’t sure whether I’m a little bit dense or smarter than I look.
“Oh, for crap’s sake,” says Medgers. I shoot her a dirty look. “Her mother ran out after she got caught doing the same damn thing.”
“Not true,” I say. “She was a DJ not a singer. She got nabbed for sampling and distributing over HandHelds.”
Smythe and Beauregard look at each other, clearly horrified by the dregs of society on the other side of the river. “This is ridiculous,” Smythe says and turns on Medgers. “It sounds to me like you have a personal vendetta against this girl’s family for something that happened years ago. And frankly, this isn’t worth our time. We’ve got bigger fish to fry with Project Calliope.”
“What if she’s part of Project Calliope?” Medgers snaps and points at me.
“There’s no way a warehouse worker could hijack a LiveStream with an illegal concert,” Smythe says. She shakes her head at the mere thought of a P
lebe like me doing such a thing.
“She could if she had help!” Medgers insists. “Check the feed from her HandHeld. That’s how her mother and that lesbo hacker Tati from Old Town distributed their illegal music.”
I unstrap my HandHeld and shove it at the detectives. “Go right ahead. Check it.” I turn to Medgers. “I’m flattered you think me so capable.”
Beauregarde waves my HandHeld away. “We’re done here.”
Relieved, I flash my best fake smile at Medgers, but in the back of my mind I’m hoping no one has thought to search my POD because the digital recorders are still there, tucked away in one of my mother’s neatly hidden cubbies.
As I follow the detectives to the door, Medgers grabs my arm and pulls me close to hiss in my ear, “I’m not as dumb as you think I am. I hear things. I put the pieces together. I know who you are.”
“Me?” I yank my arm away. “I’m just a Nobody from Nowhere doing my job.” Then I stomp out of the room, twice as determined to do it again.
ORPHEUS
Every Wednesday afternoon, my mother and I meet at the MediPlex to visit Alouette. The halls are quiet, only a few RoboNurses making rounds but no other human visitors. As usual, I’m on time but my mom is late, so I go inside Al’s private room to wait.
The minute I walk in and see my sister lying in her bed, EarBug firmly in place, eyes trained on the ceiling, I relax. For some reason, I find the wheesh, whirl, and click of machines recording Alouette’s vitals strangely hypnotic. Blood pressure, check. Respiratory rate, check. Cognitive brain function, nope. Still, as always, I’m glad to see her. I touch her hand then sing, “Alouette, gentille Alouette,” but she doesn’t join in.
Al’s eyes stay forward, never acknowledging, only occasionally blinking. She is a shriveled version of herself, young but terribly old, although I can still see her as a smaller version of my mother with my father’s intense eyes. Lest anyone forget the promise of her beauty there are framed photos all around the room of Alouette in her prime. Birthday parties. SCEWL trips. Goofing with her friends. Both of us sitting on a horse during a rare family vacation out west. It’s as if my mom holds out hope that one day Al will wake up and need a refresher course on who she was ten years ago. Or maybe my mother wants to make sure the rest of us never forget.
When I was a little kid, I believed that Alouette could hear me. I was sure my words were seeping in and the songs she sang back had meaning if only I could decode them, but I never could. Instead, I developed all kinds of rituals to trigger her miraculous recovery. If I did everything in the right order, if I didn’t make Dad mad (an impossible task), if I could get Mom to laugh (equally difficult at the time), if I brought all the exact right things—a bird’s feather, a smooth piece of sea glass, a perfect snail shell—and if I touched the doorframe, but not the wall and only stepped on the green tiles and if I saw three birds on the way over and at least two of them were singing, then maybe, just maybe she’d emerge out of her dream state.
But no. Of course not. That was the magical thinking of a doofus six-year-old. Now, nearly a decade later, I’m clear. This is it for Alouette—a bed in a long-term MediPlex surrounded by Mom’s songbird fetish. Songbird sheets. Songbird pillows. A songbird clock that plays different calls every fifteen minutes. And scattered on every surface, more flightless figurines. Like my father, the woman knows no subtlety. Yes, Mother, yes, your prized songbird is forever caged.
The clock strikes the hour with the persistent name-chanting song of the whippoorwill which Alouette repeats, “Whip-poor-will! Whip-poor-will!” Although her hearing wasn’t affected, the doctors say her brain can no longer process meaning, only echo back what she hears as songs. Over the years, she’s become an expert at reproducing the birdcalls—the slurry song of a summer tanager, the metallic trills of the veery, the lazy whistles of a meadowlark. I sing the three whippoorwill notes back to her so it feels as if I’m part of her conversation, until she changes the subject and hums the chorus to the new Geoff Joffrey tune called “Your Eyes.” It’s been near constant on the Stream this week, which Al gets through her EarBug, an amenity my father happily pays for since the least he can do is make sure she’s well cared for now and in the future.
Mom arrives a few minutes later in a long, flowing Japanese kimono embroidered with tiny dragonflies that she used to wear as a robe but has reworked into some kind of wrap dress. And of course, she looks stunning. My mother is still beautiful—tall and lanky with big eyes, a sharp nose, and a long elegant neck. She looks like a large wading bird as she walks through the door with open arms, her ornate sleeves fluttering out behind her.
“Orphie, baby,” she croons and pulls me into a long, perfumed hug. “How lovely to see you!” She lets go of me and plants a firm kiss on my sister’s forehead, then fusses with Al’s hair before dropping down in a new easy chair that wasn’t here last week. “Can you believe someone would get rid of this?” She runs her hand over the soft brown fabric and pats a bright blue speckled pillow.
“Where’d you find it?” I eye the thing, wondering if she and her behemoth boy toy Chester dragged it off some street corner, which is how she furnishes her apartment since she left my dad.
“Rajesh’s mother gave it to me,” she says lightly.
“Seriously?” I ask, not sure which is worse, my friend’s mom feeling sorry for my mother for walking away from our life or my mother dumpster diving like a Plebe.
“I re-covered it and made the pillows from fabric I got for a song at a thrift shop.” She smiles, very proud. “I thought I’d forgotten how to sew, but it came right back to me. Made me think of all the crazy outfits I created when I first started out.”
“You could be a stylist.” I sit at the end of Al’s bed.
She props her stocking feet up beside me and says, “No thank you,” with exaggerated zeal. “Any proximity to the music industry is too close for me. I’m thinking of opening an upholstery business called Re-covering Recovery.” She laughs. “Because I’m in recovery and I’d be re-covering furniture. Get it?”
I roll my eyes. “Mom, if you have to explain the joke…”
“Well, I think it’s funny anyway.” She shrugs off my dig, then settles me with a serious look. “Is your father still pressuring you?”
“Record time.” I pretend to check the clock. “Less than five minutes and here we go. How about if we talk about something other than my ASA for once?”
“Orphie, honey, just hear me out. Your father never would, but you owe me that, don’t you?”
Part of me wants to tell her that I don’t owe her squat. She might be the fun and kooky mother that all of my friends adore with her crazy stories of stardom, but when it comes to actual parenting skills, she doesn’t score much better than my father.
As if she’s reading my mind, she says, “I know I wasn’t a good mom when you were little.” She leans over and wraps her warm fingers around my ankle. “But I’m trying to be better now,” she adds.
I settle back on my elbows because once my mom gets started, the only thing to do is sit back and listen.
“I was so self-absorbed back then. That’s what years and years in the industry will get you. A big false sense of self-importance when really you’re just a balloon with nothing inside but hot air. Thin-skinned and easy to deflate. If I had been stronger…”
She stops and scans Alouette’s room as if she’s seeking solace in the songbirds all around. “I was just so young when I started. I never had a chance to get myself grounded. To find my center.” She presses her fist against her sternum. “I was only a little younger than you are now and the drug use didn’t help.”
“I know, Mom. You were self-made. You had to scramble and scrape for everything you could get.…”
“God, that’s for sure!” She throws herself back in the chair and launches into a speech I’ve heard dozens of times. “There were no patrons then and most record deals had dried up except for the biggest, most established acts. When I s
tarted out you had to spend all your time creating your own media presence to get noticed but nobody wanted to buy your music back then. Everybody expected you to give away your music for free. Download this! Stream that for pennies! Yes, please take the rights to my song and play it in your tampon commercial! It’s good exposure. I don’t need to eat.
“The only real money a working musician could make was off of touring, but the big-name acts had the venues booked up tight and boy did they stick together! It was this circle-the-wagons, keep-the-riffraff-out, protect-your-own mentality that made it nearly impossible for anyone new to break in.”
“But you did. You broke in,” I remind her. “You got lucky.”
“Luck’s a funny thing,” Mom says. “You only get it if you work hard enough to be ready when you’re standing in the right place at the right time.”
Despite her faults, I respect how my mother started from the bottom.
“Now I’m here!” She tosses her arms open wide and cracks up as if that’s the funniest thing ever.
“You were in the Buzz the other day,” I tell her. “Another mini biopic. This one was called Libellule: The Last Self-Made Pop Star.”
Mom rolls her eyes but I see a little grin. “Oh, let me guess! It started with footage of me dancing in the flatbed of a pickup truck parked in the wreckage of Times Square.” She sings the opening lines of “Pickup Truck in the City,” a country-infused pop song with a disco beat that first garnered her some attention. “Then they moved on to ‘Sugar Smack’ with DJ LazyEye slapping my bikini-clad ass as I strutted around him.”
I shudder at the memory of Ios strutting past me during summer camp, singing the song that catapulted my mother to a level of stardom she never expected. But Mom has confided in me that that kind of fame came with a price. LazyEye didn’t stop slapping her around when the video ended. It took her years to extract herself from a relationship with him and then she landed with my father, which was only a half-step up the self-respect ladder, if you ask me. He never laid a hand on her, as far as I know, but his words could be nearly as hurtful.
