“Meaning?”
“You could just as easily be out there on a checkpoint searching vehicles for IEDs at the side of a road, sniper bait.”
The shifting pale glow from the surveillance screens lit his face. I leaned in close to whisper so only he could hear. “I feel a little sorry for you.”
Baker seemed confused before but at the suggestion that someone like me could pity him, he pulled away, obviously furious.
I yanked his wheeled chair back and pulled him to me until my mouth was almost touching his ear. “Listen up, mayonnaise. You’re on the happy side of the wall. But that gun that gives you swagger? It’s to protect them, not you.”
He rolled his eyes. “I don’t take advice from a housemaid.”
“I’m not just that, Mr. Baker. I’ve seen things so trust me when I tell you, it’s not about how macho you feel. The life soldiers choose is one of sacrifice. Sorry to break it to you, but you’re no better off than a little Latinx housemaid. Here? Next to people with money and power? You’re only here to serve them and make them comfortable. When the revolution comes, you’re the sacrifice, baby girl.”
He rose from his chair and paced a moment before announcing that he was going to “hit the latrine.”
Left alone, I pulled out my hair clip, separating the memory stick from its hiding place. I bent beneath the desk and plugged the tip of the spear into the USB port.
I straightened and looked around the room. The other officers on duty had grown used to my presence. They had not noticed my act of sabotage. I went back to pretending to look for my attackers.
The Resistance had invaded in AWE’s security systems, ready to hack.
I thought I got away with it, too.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The night before the full moon, the storm that had been threatening Atlanta hit hard. Old Atlanta got the worst of it. I was to pick up Eye from the Rossis’ office tower. In the ballroom near the top of the high-rise, a party was well underway. I was supposed to take Eye home for her bedtime. An AUTONAV car dropped me off out front of the building as thunder rolled and lightning crackled across the sky.
Despite my umbrella, my legs were drenched by the torrential rain before I got to the entrance. An AWE officer checked me in and programmed the elevator to take me to the ballroom. I’d never been in an elevator except for the slow and creaky one at the narrow house. This elevator was quick and smooth. The fast rise was thrilling but the little lurch as it settled on arrival made my stomach flutter.
The doors parted and I was in a world I’d never imagined. To my left, a buffet table was laden with enough food to feed many families for many days. Most of the partygoers weren’t even eating. They stood around, drinking and talking as a violin quartet played music for them to ignore.
The servers wore violet vests to match their violet pants and dresses. Every man and woman circulating the party carrying a tray of food wore white gloves. I guessed they were Filipinx.
The attendees were mostly white and dressed in tuxedos and glamorous gowns. A few bearded men wore white thawbs.
Looking around the room at all those soft middles and chattering faces oblivious to looming dangers, I had to smile a little.
The Slow Apocalypse is about to speed up, I thought, and not for the people it usually hurts.
My heart picked up its pace as a familiar man and woman stepped out of the throng. The woman wore a mean smile. The man frowned, his forehead an array of flat parallel lines.
I never forget a face. It was Chuck and Marjorie, the people who gave me a ride as far as the diner. Unfortunately, the perverts who wanted to take me home and give me a bath didn’t forget a face, either.
“Well, well, well,” Chuck said. “It’s the liar. You remember this girl, don’t you, Marjorie? She’s the one who threatened us. What was it she said? That she’d burn us with kerosene?”
“I do remember! This girl stole my fifty dollars.”
“The word is extorted, Marjorie,” I said. “I extorted money from you, and it was only forty dollars.”
Chuck looked happy.
“You said you were his paramour,” I told Marjorie. “I looked that word up. In your case, it means you’re a prisoner to his money.”
Her smile faded.
“He’ll get rid of you when you get your next wrinkle.”
Chuck slapped me across the face. The music wasn’t so loud to cover the echo of that slap. The servers looked my way, wide-eyed and concerned. Someone laughed. Mostly, the rest of the partygoers ignored his sudden violence. My cheek was still stinging as I turned back to him and glared.
“Ooh, you’ve made her mad now, Chuck!” Marjorie tittered. Her laughter was the sort of sound only a stupid human can make, the sort of noise that invites anyone nearby to stick sharp pencils through their eardrums.
“Violence,” I said, “is the last resort of weak people who are out of ideas. Given the party, I really thought we’d trade bon mots and witty rejoinders — ”
He slapped me again, this time on my sore cheek.
“We were out in the wilderness, enjoying the view when we came upon you,” Chuck told me. “Out there on the highway and in the woods was your world. You’re in New Atlanta now. The Circle is my place. What to do? What to do? You know what? I think I’ll have you arrested. Forty dollars and uttering threats? What do you say I arrange it so you get … what do you think is fair, Marjorie?”
“I don’t know. She had me awfully frightened. Expulsion alone is too dangerous. She might prey on others. How about you talk to your friends and throw her in prison indefinitely? At least until she’s older and more mature.”
The full moon would arrive the next day. Perhaps that’s what emboldened me. I pointed to the view from the floor to ceiling windows. “There’s a storm coming. It’s almost here.”
Chuck shrugged. “So?”
“I’m talking about another storm. The one you can’t see. When the revolution comes, people like you might want to be on the good side of people like me.”
The big man laughed off my threat. “You’re boring me.”
“I hanged a man. They say the first kill is the hardest. It really wasn’t so difficult, not if I dislike someone enough.”
Chuck laughed at me. My words were too rushed to convince him but Marjorie looked worried. I slowed down and focused on the weak link.
“Look in my eyes,” I told her. “Do you see anything but conviction?”
“Chuck, call the guard. Get them to take her away, please.”
I took a step closer to Chuck. Startled, he backed away quickly. He looked worried, but not so much that I’d avoid arrest.
Marjorie’s eyes were wide and wet, not a little horrified. “Does he order you around? I’ve heard a lot about men of the Select Few. We don’t hear much about their trophy wives and mistresses but I can guess. Does he make you get young girls for him?”
“I … I … uh … “ Marjorie trembled and looked away.
“Not much of a denial there, Marge. Does Chuck tell you what to wear and say and think? He looks like the kind of guy who has to pay for a lady’s company. Maybe Chuck calls it an allowance or gifts, but that’s what it is. You’re quite attractive. No way a woman like you would be with a guy like him unless you had to be. Scared of starving? Do you worry where you’ll end up when he’s done with you? What happens when your looks slip? What does Chuck have in mind for your future?”
“It’s not like that … “ she replied in a small voice — too small a voice. “Please stop. You’re awful.”
“Says the woman who was just applauding my brutalization at the hands of Chuck’s thugs.”
She wiped a tear from her cheek as if she was hastily erasing a mistake.
I persisted. “Do you dream that one day soon he’ll drop dead and you’ll finally be free? Don’t feel bad, Marjorie. We all want to be free of some horror or other.”
Unable to meet Chuck’s withering glare, she gave another slight, uncon
vincing shake of her head. I felt sorry for her. I was a spy but Marjorie wore a mask, too. She struggled to look like a besotted idiot in love. Her mask had slipped.
Chuck caught her look, too. When he understood what she really thought of him, his face fell.
With tears slipping down her cheeks, Marjorie turned and ran as fast as anyone can in high heels and a mermaid dress. I assumed she was headed for the bathroom. Chuck ordered me to stay where I was and chased after her, maybe to argue, perhaps to chastise her.
I was headed for jail. Or maybe I was bound for a ditch before Operation Jericho went into effect. Defiance, even in the face of the inevitable, felt good. Without my knives, hurtful, truthful words were perhaps the only way a person like me could hurt a man like Chuck.
I have no illusions that I would have successfully bullied my way out of the clutches of Chuck’s assorted henchmen and jailers. It wasn’t cleverness that gave me my escape. It was my job as Eye’s nanny that got me away from Chuck before he returned.
An AWE officer appeared only long enough to scan my face. “Kismet Beatriz? You don’t belong here. Come back to the elevator. The Rossi family is expecting you in Mr. Rossi’s office. Top floor.”
I hurried after my unwitting savior. He turned a key and pushed the elevator button. I rose to the selected floor and out of my enemy’s clutches.
I breathed a sigh of relief, thankful for the respite. It would not last long.
Chapter Thirty-Three
My heart was still pounding as the elevator doors parted. I wiped the sweat from my brow and stepped into an anteroom. Chuck had ordered me to stay, as if I were a dog. I marveled at the arrogance of a person so sure his orders would be followed that he expected me to hang around to get arrested. He must have figured he could get me later. Once within the Circle, where could I escape?
One disaster at a time, I thought.
Grammy would say, “God doesn’t send you more than you can handle, but what does God know about us little people? He expects too much and most of us are too weak to carry that kind of load, if you ask me.”
Since the funerals, Grammy told me that same thing every day, several times a day. She had a lot of memorable observations I loved, but as her mind slipped, she held onto some more than others. It was as if she were clinging to a security blanket, trying to hold on to what she was. Those little bits of wisdom had become all she was reduced to.
Her memory loss was slow at first. That was the worst time, when she could see her erasure coming. “I’m losing my marbles, Kismet! I miss them, but I almost can’t wait until I won’t miss them anymore.”
I stood in the anteroom on the edge of a panic attack. Cold sweat beaded on my forehead. My breath was short and shallow, like a hummingbird. I needed to get back to Grammy. I wanted to run.
No wonder people who could never join the Select Few aspired to their station. There were even commoners who idolized them. Theirs was a faint hope for shelter, a dream that after a long fall, somehow they would somehow land safely.
I was very close to being exposed. The closer we crept toward the full moon, the more precarious my position seemed. Was Chuck, at that same moment, ordering his goons to search the building for me? Almost certainly.
Kirk appeared in a doorway. “Kismet? Are you not feeling well?”
I cleared my throat. “The elevator,” I said. “It’s fast. My stomach … ”
“It’s not that fast. Are you claustrophobic?”
“Sure, that could be it. A little.”
“Come. I’ve got the best view of the city. This’ll clear your head.”
I followed him into a huge office with floor-to-ceiling windows. Eye lay asleep on a couch beside a massive desk. Evelyn stood in silhouette against a raging sky. As thunder rolled overhead, lightning struck Old Atlanta again and again.
“Magnificent, isn’t it?” Evelyn said. “What’s that old joke? This light show brought to you by God, maker of just about everything! The cannibal class will not sleep easy tonight.”
Before I could stop myself, I blurted, “Cannibal class?”
“A little joke among us,” Kirk explained. “All those people beyond our walls would crawl over each other, kill each other to stand where you’re standing right now.”
Maybe not each other, I thought. Maybe you.
“Hard to believe we had another summer of drought and now this,” Evelyn said. “There’s going to be a lot of flooding. Maybe we’ll get forty days and forty nights and all the rats will drown.”
I heard relish in Evelyn’s tone. To her, the people in the camps were just vermin. People like me wished we had money to feel safe. For Evelyn Rossi to feel safe, we all had to die.
She put an arm around my shoulder. The alcohol on her breath told me she was not just a little drunk. “Quite the view, isn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Doesn’t it make you grateful?” she asked. “No worries about a leaky roof, the privacy of your own room … food. When I was just a little younger than you, I lived at home with five brothers. My mother died in childbirth. My father resented me for it. Now they’re all gone. Some died honorably in war. One went to war and came home to kill himself. The youngest died of starvation. Yet here I stand.”
“Queen of the castle!” Kirk toasted her with a raised glass of wine.
“They thought I was weak,” she added. “My father, my brothers … you know what they didn’t understand? I was patient. They picked on me but all I had to do was wait them out. One by one, they all fell down. Ordinary people have families. That’s nice, but I have a legacy. No, a dynasty.”
“An empire, my love,” Kirk said.
Evelyn glanced back at her sleeping daughter. “An empire that will last a thousand years. We are the clear blue sky and the cannibal class is just cloud formations … so temporary they’re almost silly.”
She gestured toward Old Atlanta. “All that is going away.”
“You rose and rose,” Kirk added. “Admirable. I spotted your potential from the moment we met.”
“Please, Kirk. Speak with elegance. Use your English accent.”
“You know I don’t feel comfortable putting on airs. I’m not ashamed to come from here.”
“Bad form! Please, Kirk! Be sexy for me.”
Kirk sighed. “Beastly, sorry, madam! I do declare, we should let the nanny fetch our offspring and return to the cotillion.”
“Now you’re just making fun of me,” Evelyn pouted.
“Gently,” he said, “but yes. Let’s get back to the party and have some claret.”
“Let’s stay and watch the storm for another few minutes. I do love a good storm, especially from up here. What’s the quote from Isaiah about storms and our safety within the Circle?”
“You’re the family’s Bible scholar, honey.”
“It’s … um.” She finished her drink and gestured to the angry sky. “I’ve got it! I’ve got it! It will be a shelter and shade from the heat of the day, a refuge and a hiding place from the storm and the rain.”
Still sweating, I blurted a question I shouldn’t have asked, “Don’t most of the people in those camps share your religion, Mrs. Rossi?”
Evelyn removed her arm from my shoulder, stared at me and swayed. “He works in mysterious ways. No one can pretend to know the mind of God but I have a few guesses. Maybe they believe, but not strongly enough. Not everybody goes to heaven. If the cannibal class were among the blessed, they’d be up here drinking with me.”
I said nothing. She leaned closer, grabbed my wrist and shook my arm. “Right?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
“Or maybe we just arrived here under our own power,” Kirk suggested.
Said the guy born with every advantage and a ton of money, I thought.
“You’re lucky to be here,” Evelyn told me. “You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You’re not jealous, are you? Well? Are you?”
&
nbsp; “No, ma’am.”
But I was.
The tempest ravaged Old Atlanta’s refugee camps, homeless shelters and detention centers. If not for that storm, Operation Jericho would not have ended as it did. Evelyn would attribute her fate and mine to God’s caprice. I prefer to blame the end of this story on the Law of Unintended Consequences.
I gathered Eye in my arms and walked to the elevator. An AWE guard was waiting. For a second or two, I thought I was caught again.
Kirk leaned in behind me to push the button for the underground garage. “There’s a car waiting for them downstairs. Make sure they get there, will you? Apparently, our nanny’s heart goes pitty-pat in elevators.”
With the Rossis’ child in my arms and an escort, I got out of the building and into the back seat of the AUTONAV car without anyone stopping me.
Under a heavy curtain of rain, traffic was slow. As we inched past the front of the building, a small crowd gathered in the tower lobby. AWE officers were scanning faces and IDs. I didn’t see Chuck, but I was pretty sure they were looking for me.
Eye stirred in my arms and sat up. “That party was so boring, I fell asleep. Only old people music.” She used her proper English accent out of a dead sleep. I guessed her indoctrination into the Select Few was complete.
I was wrong.
The girl said something more but the torrent increased. Rain drummed on the roof, drowning her out. I pointed to my ears and yelled, “Sorry! Can’t hear you!”
Eye smiled, put her arms around my neck and pulled me closer. “I said, tomorrow. Just one more day to the full moon! You must be excited.”
I pulled away, in shock, not knowing what to say. Somehow the plans had been leaked. Surely, Operation Jericho was doomed. A wave of nausea rushed through me.
Citizen Second Class- Apocalypse Next Page 17
