NK3

by Michael Tolkin

  The receptionist this morning didn’t look like the one from the night, but she wore the Cecilia name tag. Hopper checked his watch against the clock behind the Cecilia. His watch said 6:18; her clock said 6:52.

  There were free bicycles on the sidewalk and he took a steel-framed road bike with straight handlebars.

  Hopper pedaled south on Figueroa, past the hotels and apartments, past the parking lots of car dealers, the cars maintained by Inventory but not yet in service. He turned west on the boulevard that would bring him to the house and then south again, to the wall of rubble he’d seen from the balcony. The wall was three stories high, made of the buildings demolished by Toby Tyler’s Burn Brigade. The buildings had been knocked down, crushed, and pushed together into a loose mound the height of the Fence, made from sections of roof, floor carpets, pink fiberglass insulation, staircases, refrigerators, and washing machines. Why didn’t the Teacher know about this?

  Hopper’s Silent Voice said, “The house is on the other side of this, somewhere in there. You lived so close to where you are now.

  A block to the west a gap in the wall was protected by an open gate that was guarded by Security. Two men and a woman, all of them in formal wear, with pistols in their holsters, sat under the awning of an Airstream trailer.

  A line of Inventory trucks with Second Wavers sitting in front and Drifters in the back waited to be waved through.

  Hopper rode up to the guards. This was going to take a lot of words.

  “Hello,” he said, as instructed by his Silent Voice.

  The head of the guards, an Unverified Second Waver, was Bruce Willis, the actor. He told them to stop.

  “No one goes into the Burn Zone unless he’s in a crew. It’s too dangerous with all the charges being set in place.”

  “What are charges?”

  “All of the things that are going to blow up and set everything behind me on fire.”

  “How do I get in a crew?”

  “I’m Security,” said Willis. “Check with Inventory.” He wasn’t hostile; he was just describing his limitations.

  “When is it burning?” asked Hopper.

  “Soon.”

  “Ask them how soon,” said his Silent Voice.

  “How soon?” asked Hopper.

  “Hoping tomorrow, expecting the day or three after,” said Willis.

  Hopper’s Silent Voice was so silent when Willis said this that Hopper could feel the Voice’s anger. “Why are you mad at me?” Hopper asked him.

  “You wasted a day with those children in that school. We should have climbed the wall into this area last night, if not the night before.”

  In the staging area south of the hotels on Figueroa, a thousand ­Drifters—men and women—lined up in ranks of a hundred. Hopper left his bicycle at a crowded rack and settled in a middle line as a caravan of pickup trucks, supermarket delivery trucks, and moving vans pulled alongside the curb while supervisors shuttled the workers along. Hopper was pushed into the back of a U-Haul truck. The other five in the truck with him were three women and two men. The driver asked their names but didn’t write them down or introduce himself. Hopper told him, “Nole Hazard.”

  One of the women said, “I really shouldn’t be here. This is all a mistake. Listen to me. You can tell from my speech patterns that I’ve been through rehab, early rehab. I should be in Center Camp. I should be at the parties. I should be climbing up the legs of The Man or asking hard questions of The Woman. I should be wearing costumes from the finest old stores. I know that the stores were fine. How’s that for proof my story is true?” She was probably in her late thirties, with something written around her eyes that showed, from the old days, a disappointment that would have progressed into a permanent expression of dismay if she hadn’t been rescued from that kind of pain by the hidden blessing of NK3, salvation by forgetting she was ever in love with two men who changed their minds about her. Andy Warhol’s portrait of Elizabeth Taylor was tattooed on her right shoulder.

  “I’m Siouxsie Banshee. That’s what I call myself. My real name is Sonia Pryce, P-R-Y-C-E, which I didn’t know until I saw my picture in an art journal at the County Museum. I used to work for Vayler Monokeefe at the County Museum of Art. That was my proof. I tore the picture out of the page but I lost it. I’m Siouxsie Banshee because I needed a name before I found my real name. What’s your name?”

  “Nole Hazard.”

  “Nole? Aren’t I smart? Isn’t Sonia Pryce a real name? Could I make that up? Don’t I sound like someone who went through an early rehab?”

  “I think so.” But he didn’t think so. He didn’t know.

  “Have any of you been on this detail before? You see the reason I’m here is that I have a Strong Feeling about quality. And these so-called experts don’t know the difference between a print and a painting.”

  Bruce Willis waved the truck through the gate into the Burn Zone.

  One of the other Drifters in the truck pointed out a stack of red gasoline cans in the middle of an intersection. “Burn soon.”

  Siouxsie Banshee covered her face with her hands. “Well, that’s the level of conversation back here. Isn’t that the lowest? All he can do is point and say two words. I don’t have to point and I can say a thousand words.”

  The truck turned right, quickly, no warning, throwing the six Drifters into a packed tangle.

  The view from the back had changed. They were in a neighborhood of small houses, and apartments with two or four units. The gardens were dead. Dusty cars were in the driveways.

  The truck stopped. No one told them to wait, but they stayed where they were until the driver and his passenger came around.

  Siouxsie whispered to Frank, “The driver doesn’t even know he’s Asian, and the other one may not know she’s from Africa.”

  The driver introduced himself. “I’m Martin Rome, from Inventory, and my partner today is 18 Tee.”

  “There’s a story behind my name,” said 18 Tee. “And I’m sure you all want to know it. He’s with Inventory but I’m with Systems. I installed Internet cables. I fixed phone lines. I did real things. I worked for AT&T: 18 Tee. Why is Systems doing Inventory? With the Burn coming, Inventory needs help. I hope that answers your questions.”

  18 Tee carried a manila envelope and set it down on the bed of the truck. She opened the envelope and laid out ten sheets of paper with pictures of valuable furniture, dishware, flatware, and art.

  She addressed the group. “This is your job today. We’ve been assigned ten square blocks. We will work fast. Our committee head, Vayler Monokeefe, expects us to find much that is of value and we must work hard and move things quickly but our first goal is to preserve. If the houses are locked, we break the door open. Some of these houses will have dog doors and some of those houses will have become home to coydogs. They will stink. The furniture will likely be ruined. We will not take it. Look at the printouts. We only want pieces of furniture that look like this. We’re looking for American furniture made in the nineteen fifties through the nineteen seventies. We’re also looking for record collections, CDs of course but also vinyl albums. They’re becoming popular in Center Camp. Unopened bottles of alcohol or wine found in special wine closets in the basements, that’s what we want.”

  Siouxsie Banshee raised her hand.

  “Yes?”

  “They can’t follow what you’re saying. I’m the only one who can. Look. Some of this is Stickley furniture and the rest of it is called midcentury modern. This neighborhood is too old to find much midcentury modern. And some of this stuff is just imitation junk.”

  “How do you know this?” 18 Tee asked.

  “I was a curator. I was in rehab to supervise the protection of our heritage. I had a picture that proves this. I knew Vayler Monokeefe.”

  “Pictures don’t prove anything.”

  “I knew Vayler be
fore things changed.”

  “That’s not verification.”

  “I’m not in the DMV because I’m from New York City. That’s what it said in the article and I looked it up and New York is a long way from here. It’s not California, which is what this is or used to be.”

  18 Tee asked Rome if they should call someone about this. He refused. “We’ve been told what to select and she’s been told to help carry what we select and I’m saying to you both: Don’t make trouble. Just do your job.”

  “This is so unfair,” said Siouxsie Banshee.

  They went in teams of two into the houses. Hopper followed Siouxsie Banshee, compelled by his Teacher’s warnings to stay with people who know about the world, either what it is made from or how it works, those who hold the shredded systems together.

  The living room set in the first house matched the pictures. 18 Tee brought the others into the house to carry the furniture to the truck.

  “This is all crap,” said Siouxsie. “This is all imitation mission, cheap crap from big stores. Look, here, this veneer. Pull it back, see? It peels away and inside, look, wood chips pressed together. Doesn’t that verify me?”

  18 Tee told Siouxsie not to break the furniture.

  “I should kill myself,” said Siouxsie.

  Hopper said, “Maybe you should. Then they wouldn’t bother you. And you wouldn’t be angry at them.”

  “He talks! You talk. You’re not like the others. I knew that as soon as I saw you. It’s in the eyes. And you have a wedding ring. Don’t see many of those.”

  “Why not?”

  “All jewelry was taken off for the magnetic resonance part of the rehab. Then, later, wedding rings . . . Don’t you know this?”

  “I don’t know this.”

  “The wedding rings were confiscated so that people with rings wouldn’t match up with other people with rings. It was called Operation Clean Slate. The order came from the top, from Chief, on June Moulton’s recommendations to build a consistent mythology. Look at all the things I know! He didn’t want the new society to have divisions left over from the old. The rehab process didn’t take couples, only the person who was needed, so very, very few couples made it through together. This house is useless. Let’s see how the others are doing.” She led him outside.

  His Silent Voice warned him: “Don’t ask her any more questions about the rings and the past.”

  In the next house there were four armless chairs with steel legs and leather cushions, and no arms. Couch with bentwood arms. Siouxsie called for 18 Tee to look at it.

  “This is the real thing,” said Siouxsie. “This is not Ikea. These are designed by Marcel Breuer. I’m surprised to find them here. They’re great.”

  “I don’t have a picture of them.”

  “You don’t have to have one.”

  “But then it can’t be verified.”

  “I’m verifying it for you. You don’t need a picture of them. I know what they are.”

  “I have to have a picture of this kind of chair.”

  “This area is going to be burned, this will be destroyed, and these are fine pieces.”

  “That may be so, but you’re not verified so you can’t verify them, so they stay.”

  Across the street, two of the crew found a chair that matched the printouts. They called to 18 Tee for her opinion.

  “Good work, this is an Eames chair. Put it on the truck.”

  Siouxsie Banshee stopped them to tilt the chair and look at the mark on the bottom. She offered more of her dismal appraisal that everything bad in the world was aimed at her heart. “That’s not an original. It’s pretty but it’s not really worth anything. Why did they do this to me?”

  “Who?” asked Hopper.

  “The doctors who saved my life. This is hell. I’m in hell. They should have let me just die. This isn’t the life they wanted for me. I don’t need the printouts. I’m a museum director. We were nervous people.”

  The Eames chair was the only treasure that matched anything on the printouts. They wrapped it in furniture blankets and tried to tie it to rings on the floor of the truck. None of them knew how to tie a knot. Hopper knew, but his Silent Voice said, “Don’t show them what you can do.”

  The truck drove to another street, passing a house with gray walls and a flat roof.

  “This is the Lukens house,” said Siouxsie. “Raphael Soriano was the architect. I know this house, I have pictures of it in my office at the museum. This house shouldn’t be burned.” But she knew it would be, and was eager to save what she could.

  The furniture in the Lukens house wasn’t in the printout, but the kitchen held a few matches; dishes, vases, and cutlery. Siouxsie Banshee was happy with what they found. The crew wrapped the dishes in shirts and towels taken from drawers and closets, then put them in suitcases and loaded them into the truck.

  After a lunch of canned sardines and oranges, they moved to the center of the zone, a neighborhood of older large bungalows. “The people who lived here took great care of these old houses,” said Siouxsie Banshee. “The roofs are new. The paint is good. The concrete in the driveways isn’t badly cracked. Every other car is a Lexus or a BMW or a Prius. This must have been a pleasant place to live.”

  The truck stopped. Siouxsie Banshee yelled at 18 Tee. “Why does all this have to be burned? A Neutra house over there, and here, a street of Greene and Greene–inspired bungalow-style houses from the nineteen twenties. This is one of the things I was trained in rehab to know about. I was programmed to save what was beautiful from people who were programmed to make sure I had food to eat and you can’t have one without the other! Whose decision is it to destroy all of this?”

  “No one is ever going to live here. The old houses and neighborhoods take too much energy to maintain for too few people. All of you can live well in the buildings downtown while the power and water are cut off from the old neighborhoods. When and if the population returns, we, or the people of the future, can build new houses here.”

  Rome led the group to the houses on the west side of the street, but Hopper was drawn to the other side.

  Hopper walked down a driveway between two large houses, with stained glass windows and upper decks supported by columns made of river stones set in concrete.

  Siouxsie Banshee was impressed. “They had these porches because they didn’t have air-conditioning. So people would sit here on hot days and watch the street. The modern houses don’t have porches because everyone stayed inside. I’m kind of sick of what I know. I didn’t ask for it.”

  Rome led the group into the house. Hopper walked through the living room to the kitchen and the back of the house and opened the back door. There was a one-lane swimming pool, almost the length of the yard; water long gone, it was filled instead with leaves and palm fronds. There was a redwood fence at the end of the yard.

  The three-story house on the other side of the fence was painted a dark green with brown trim at the windows. There was a redwood play set in the backyard with two swings and a tower. Three sets of metal wind chimes hung from brass chains on the eaves of the house’s ample back porch.

  Hopper pulled himself up and over the fence, into the house’s backyard. 18 Tee was calling for everyone to come back. He ignored her and went to the back steps of the house, kicked in the door, and went into the kitchen.

  He knew where everything was. He reached under a cabinet and touched a key, then another one, hanging on a loop of metal, on a hook. Someone was calling his name again.

  He didn’t need his Silent Voice to tell him to get out of there quickly. Siouxsie Banshee watched him leave the house and 18 Tee came into that yard just as he was crossing over the fence.

  “There’s nothing there,” he said.

  Siouxsie Banshee asked, “You sure? The place is in better condition than most.”

  “Someone els
e got it.”

  18 Tee was unhappy. “What are you doing in houses that aren’t on our list?”

  Siouxsie Banshee felt something in Hopper that she wanted to protect. “I’m not looking to do more work, either. Martin Rome found some totally crap tables and wants us to take them away.”

  Rome heard this. “They’re on the printout.”

  “I know that radical inclusion is a big thing in Center Camp, but this is a mistake. It’s heavy and it’s junk. Why waste our time?”

  Hopper saw 18 Tee looking at him as he climbed from the other yard. He wanted to deny her the time to think about his quiet hesitation at the redwood fence.

  “What should we take first?” he asked her. She looked through the furniture matches on the printout and led him to the dining room table.

  Hopper called for the others to help him and they carried it to the truck.

  “It’s too long,” said Martin Rome.

  “It can stick out the back,” said 18 Tee.

  When they pushed it into the truck the table leg pressed into the suitcase, breaking some of the plates before Siouxsie Banshee stopped them from forcing the table backward any more. The workers, once they were told what to do, didn’t always adjust for circumstances.

  “Those were Russel Wright dishes,” said Siouxsie Banshee. “They had value. This table is junk.”

  “It matches the picture.”

  “Not really.”

  “Who else but you could tell the difference?”

  “Nobody else but me. That’s why I should be verified. It’s not fair. Is it fair? Do you think it’s fair?”

  Hopper had no opinion about any of this but he knew that Siouxsie had covered for him in the backyard so he agreed with her. “It’s not fair.”

  A dog pack down the street sniffed at the group. Martin Rome shouted at them to go away, but the dogs held their ground. The leader was a thin rottweiler missing patches of hair.

  Hopper sat with his feet over the edge of the truck bed and held on to the table as the truck left the curb. He tried to mark the location by fixing the trees on the street as a landmark, but when the truck turned at the corner, he saw that the palm trees were the same height, the same distance from each other. He could find his way back if the dogs stayed quietly in the same place.