The Humanity Project

by Jean Thompson

  “That sounds a little bit like, I hate to say it, fraud.”

  Imelda shrugged. “Not according to statute.”

  “We’re supposed to be aiming for a higher standard,” Christie told her. “Although it’s not a bad idea.” She admired Imelda’s enterprising spirit and hoped it would find some appropriate and ethical outlet. It wasn’t hard to imagine how she might have bluffed and charmed her way through her different profitable scams. She was tall and black-haired and glamorous and she still wore the excellent suits and shoes she had acquired pre-prison. She kept her hair in a sleek updo and her taste in jewelry ran to discreet gold. Anyone walking into the office would take Imelda for the boss and herself for the secretary. “Hit refresh again,” Christie said.

  Nothing. “Maybe tomorrow,” Imelda said. “Don’t slump. You look terrible when you slump. Up with the chin, back with the shoulders. Like me, see? Even in the prison, I worked on my good posture. Why does the old lady want to give all her money away?”

  “Don’t call her that, please. She’s not giving it away. She’s investing in human nature.”

  “Human nature,” Imelda said, “is not the best investment the market has to offer.”

  “It’s her money and she can do whatever she wants with it.” Christie hoped that Mrs. Foster would back off her original plan before she, Christie, had to hand out checks to a bunch of reprobates and pirates. And did she even believe that wealth allowed people to spend their money in whatever mean or foolish way they wished? Did wealth convey such entitlement? She was too tired to start thinking in this way. “Let’s pack up,” she told Imelda.

  Imelda shut down the computer and helped Christie empty the wastebaskets and turn off lights and lock up. It had been raining for the last two days and Imelda took her own immaculate raincoat from the closet. “Is this yours?” she demanded of Christie, holding up a baggy olive green slicker. “Sweetie, you have to let me take you shopping sometime. You dress like a refugee and you will never get yourself a man.”

  “What would I do with one of those?” Christie was used to Imelda’s bullying by now.

  “Have a baby,” Imelda said promptly. “My little Gracie angel, she’s the best thing I ever did. If you don’t want a man, at least get yourself a baby. You can do that, you just go to a clinic. Tomorrow I am bringing you a trench coat I never got around to wearing. Very sharp, metallic gray. A Burberry. The tags are still on it. You try it and see.”

  They said good night and Christie walked to her car through the puddling, lake-like parking lot. It was the end of October and the clocks hadn’t yet been turned back, but the drilling rain made for an early, lowering darkness. Traffic on the freeway moved at a stately pace. The wet pavement mirrored the red, smeared taillights. Her defroster wasn’t keeping up with the moisture and she had to keep clearing the windshield with her hand. Once you allowed people familiar access to you, as she seemed to have done with Imelda, they felt free to make their suggestions. What would she do with a man—or a baby, for that matter? She’d spent a long time not thinking about these things. She wasn’t even sure about the trench coat.

  When she reached her apartment, Art and his girlfriend, the one with the name like the water filter, Brita or Berta or something, were camped out under the overhang of the parking structure, grilling their dinner on a hibachi. Art waved her over. “Hey Chris, we’re having a rain party. Want some wine?” He wagged a bottle at her.

  Christie started to say no out of reflex, then told them she had to go in and drop some things off first. She changed into sweatpants and a heavy sweater and socks, and wrapped herself in a blanket against the chill.

  Lawn chairs had been set in a circle around the hibachi. Christie eased her sore back into one of these and accepted a paper cup of white wine. Maybe Imelda was right, it was all a matter of posture. Or the bad ergonomics of her office chair. “Thanks.” The rain had eased up into a steady light fall, and there was a pleasant sense of shelter in looking out at it.

  “We’re making fish tacos. Want some?” Art prodded at the foil bundles on the grill.

  “Do you eat fish? I forget. I can make you one without fish.”

  Christie told him not to bother, the wine was all she wanted. Now that Art had himself a woman, it was easier to spend time with him. Although he sometimes annoyed her with his solicitude, as if Christie was an ex-girlfriend and Art was trying to console her for things not working out.

  Beata. That was her name. Beata said, “I wish I had your pretty hair! What is it you do to it?”

  “Wash it, mostly.” A little too much effort on Beata’s part as well, as if Art had cast her as an object of pity. Beata’s dark hair was cut all one length, like a paintbrush.

  Talk about dressing like a refugee. When Christie had first seen her, Beata resembled some kind of Eastern European nun. There had been a remarkable transformation, to a look that the fashion people called “flirty.” Tonight she wore unseasonable white jeans, a tight white T-shirt encrusted with sparkles and dangling ribbons, and a pair of bare pink sandals. Christie noted, unkindly, that this was a difficult look for someone with as much in the way of boobs and butt as Beata had, though Art didn’t seem to mind. There were more sparkles and ornamentation and dangling stuff around her neck and wrists. Art had not undergone any big makeovers, but Christie did notice that his shirt had been ironed. Why was she so concerned about appearances these days? Maybe because everybody else around her was.

  “We have chips,” Beata said, offering a bag to Christie. “Or fruit? Arthur, shall I go upstairs and find the grapefruit salad?”

  “Please don’t on my account.” Something about her made people keep thinking she needed things. She drank some of the wine. It had a friendly taste and she drank a good bit more. “How’s Linnea doing?” she asked, attempting to deflect their attention from herself.

  “Pretty good. Not bad. OK.”

  “Not so OK,” Beata said. Then, to Christie, “Boyfriend.”

  “He’s not her boyfriend. He’s too old for her.”

  “Oh, well then.” Beata raised her pencil-thin eyebrows and made a droll face.

  “She says he isn’t.”

  “She is lovesick for him.”

  “She’s fifteen years old,” Art said doggedly. It had the air of an argument they’d had before.

  Again Beata turned to Christie. “As if fifteen is too young to be in crazy hopeless love. It is exactly the right age.”

  Christie wished she hadn’t asked anything about Linnea. Now she found herself appealed to, as if she were some arbiter of crazy lovesick behavior. “Teenagers, who knows.”

  “He’s such a nice-looking boy,” Beata said.

  “He’s entirely too full of sperm.”

  “It’s just nature. Relax, Dad.” Another conspiratorial glance in Christie’s direction. Did she look like somebody who knew about these things?

  “I guess I should be glad she’s interested in normal teenage experiences,” Art said, looking glum. “Even risky, promiscuous, normal experiences.”

  “They are not having intercourse,” Beata said. “Of that I’m sure. You watch them together, you’ll see.”

  “She should have been home by now. I need to call her, excuse me.”

  “Poor Art,” Beata said, once he had gone upstairs. She bent over the hibachi and used a spatula to turn the fish over. Her white underpants rose up above the line of her jeans. “He could not protect her from the one terrible thing, so now he tries to protect her from everything else.”

  It had sounded terrible. The boy with the gun, the dead girls. There were parts of it Christie could not fully imagine—blood, terror, pain—and at least one part she could. The fear that some pointless and evil act could single you out at any moment. You didn’t let yourself dwell on such things. Unless they had already happened to you. “I’m glad she’s doing better.”

&
nbsp; “Better, who knows. At least different.” They were quiet, watching the rain blow and mist around the streetlights. Where it hit the metal edge of the roof, it ran together and dripped to the ground in threads. Beata said, “We have other food too. A rice casserole. Cheese? Bread and jam?”

  “No thank you. I’m going to go in and eat my own dinner in a minute.” She was getting hungry, she ought to leave before she had to watch Art and Beata feeding each other and licking each other’s fingers. But she was tired, and not in a hurry to be in a hurry about anything. She finished the wine and Beata refilled her glass.

  “I’ll get drunk,” Christie said, and laughed foolishly. She already felt a little blurry, a little drunk around the edges. She wasn’t that used to drinking. In order to try and cover up, she said the first thing that came into her head: “You look different these days.”

  “Good or bad?”

  “Just different. I mean, good.”

  “More modern American girl.”

  “Yes,” Christie agreed. Although “modern American girl” had many gradations, and Beata had staked out a certain territory for herself.

  “Do you have an opinion about tattoos?”

  “I suppose I have different opinions for different tattoos. Depending on where and who and what. Some of them are OK. Most of them are a waste of perfectly good skin.” Christie realized she was doing what drunks do, talking to show how undrunk she was, and digging herself a deeper hole. Do not speak unless it improves a silence. There were times she thought she was forgetting everything she ever knew. “Do you have any tattoos?” she asked, as she should have to begin with.

  “Art wants me to get one. Somewhere personal. I have yet to decide.”

  It was possible that Beata was a little drunk herself. Before Christie had to ask, or not ask, about the prospective tattoo, Art came bounding down the stairs. At the same time, Linnea stepped out of the rain and into the circle of lawn chairs. With her was the boy who lived at Mrs. Foster’s.

  It took Christie a moment to sort it out, to try and to fail at understanding what he was doing here. With Linnea? She didn’t get it. But here he was. Full of sperm. Oh thank you, Art, for that thought. What was she, a child molester? He wore his usual jeans and hooded sweatshirt and his neck and throat even in this light were sun-colored.

  Art was saying, I just called you, why didn’t you answer, and Linnea said Because I knew it was you and I was almost here. Art threw up his hands, meaning, Teenagers, while the boy stood there with the polite, sulky face kids wore when they were around parents.

  Nobody was paying any attention to Christie yet. She would have liked to get up and leave, or not be there in the first place. She wrapped the blanket closer around herself. Maybe she’d be taken for a homeless person trying to stay out of the rain. Linnea always ignored her anyway, and for once Christie was glad.

  Linnea had gone back to brown hair again, with a carrot-colored stripe in the front. She flopped down into one of the chairs. “Is it food yet? I’m hungry.”

  “Almost,” Art said. “What do you want to drink?”

  “A margarita.”

  “Ha-ha. Coke, 7Up, or milk. How about you, Conner?”

  Conner, that was his name, said he’d have a Coke. He sat down next to Linnea. He hadn’t looked in Christie’s direction and maybe he’d join with Linnea in ignoring her. She was pointlessly embarrassed by his presence. The grown-up thing to do would be to introduce herself and say, surely I’ve seen you at Mrs. Foster’s. There was a moment when she could have done this, but she let it get past her. Art and Beata went up and down the stairs, fetching drinks, plates, silverware, taco fixings, salad. Christie drank more wine.

  “Here, try a taco,” Art said, offering her a plate. “Or I guess this is two.”

  “No thanks,” Christie said. The hunger had gone right out of her. The boy gave her a quick sideways glance, then looked away. She felt sure he knew who she was.

  The others sat down to eat, balancing the plates on their laps. It was all good, they agreed, yes, very good. The rain had picked up again. It landed hard on the pavement and rebounded so that the ground was alive with water. Christie had the sensation of her foot falling asleep, except it was her whole body, gone numb and tingling. She knew she was halfway to being drunk and stupid, and the best thing was to sit there quietly and not call attention to herself. She watched the boy and Linnea. What an odd pair they made. She thought Beata was right, they weren’t sleeping together. She couldn’t have said how she knew that. The alcohol was making her notice such things, as if she was a sexual Geiger counter. Here were Art and Beata, finding excuses to brush up against each other, two people remembering the last time they made love and looking forward to the next. Here were her own furtive feelings, which were like a rash that should not be scratched in public. She didn’t have any designs on the boy, or any fantasy imaginings. At least, she didn’t think so. He only triggered other disreputable designs and fantasies.

  Of course Linnea was lovesick. How could she not be? The boy was too perfectly beautiful. But Linnea was keeping her face blank and indifferent, that useful all-purpose teenage pose. Every so often Art looked over at her, and Linnea made a point of not looking back. Beata had draped a dish towel around her neck to protect her white clothes. She ate her tacos with a knife and fork, in tiny bites. Everything the others did seemed to amuse her.

  And the boy himself? Christie couldn’t read him. He drew the others in and gave nothing back, like a dark-burning star. Beata finished with her plate and brushed at her clothes with the dish towel. “Linnea, are you dressing up for Halloween?”

  “I don’t know. They’re having a zombie apocalypse at school the Friday before. Maybe I’ll do something for that.”

  “Zombie apocalypse,” said Art. “You’ll have to explain this to me.”

  “See, some people are zombies, and they’ve attacked the school and eaten people’s brains and stuff. Some people play victims and lie around being dead. Other people are the survivors and they try to keep the zombies from killing anybody else. Meanwhile, society breaks down because everybody who’s supposed to be picking up trash and growing food and taking care of the power plants is either a zombie or else they’re hiding from the zombies. I don’t think that part goes on at school. They just have bulletins over the loudspeaker.”

  Nobody said anything. “I want to be one of the zombies,” Linnea said. “The makeup is really cool.”

  Art said, pleasantly, “Whose idea was it, spending a school day on this stuff?”

  “Dad, it’s only the last couple of periods. We had an assembly and we voted. Lighten up.”

  “Honey, I just don’t think it’s very healthy.”

  “Fine. I’ll dress up as a big plate of broccoli.”

  “Please take the zombie makeup off before you come home. I hope you will please do that much for me.”

  After a moment Beata said, “How about you, Conner? What is your costume going to be?”

  “Just what I always wear.”

  He didn’t seem to mean it as a joke. There was another silence. Beata stood and began clearing up the plates and food. Art helped her. Conner said he had to go, and Linnea got up also. Christie did a good job of not watching him. “Back in a minute,” Linnea said.

  Art waited until they were gone. “I’m going to call the goddamn school.”

  “No,” Beata said. “Leave it be. It’s just pretend.”

  “She can pretend to be something else.”

  Christie said, “At least she seems to be looking forward to it.” The other two gave her a weary look.

  Art said, “I’m going to talk to a counselor. I guess they haven’t had themselves a school shooting in these parts lately. Lucky them.”

  Linnea came back then and stood with her hands in the pockets of her denim jacket. “Did you get enough to eat, honey?” Art
asked. “Come on upstairs and we’ll fix you another plate.”

  “No, I’m going to hang out here by the campfire a while longer.”

  Christie got up to go and Linnea said, “Wait a minute, I want to ask you something.”

  Christie sat back down. Art gave her a different look: what the hell. “Thanks for the wine,” Christie told Art and Beata as they started upstairs. She thought she’d come out on the other side of drunkenness and furtive desire. She was only tired now, curious about what Linnea had to say, but wishing it was already over.

  Linnea took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. “Are you going to narc me out?” She meant the smoking.

  “Not unless I’m asked a direct question about it.”

  Linnea considered this, exhaling the smoke to one side. “I don’t want to go back up there until they finish getting their freak on. You know?”

  Christie thought she knew. She was pretty sure she heard such things from downstairs. She didn’t know what to make of this sudden chattiness. Linnea said, “I bet that was Beata’s Halloween costume she had on tonight.”

  “If you’re going to talk about somebody, you should do it to their face.”

  “Like people always do around me, right?”

  One reason not to have a baby was so that you would not eventually have a teenager. “What was it you wanted to ask me?”

  Linnea hitched her chair closer. The orange stripe of hair was distracting. It looked like a caterpillar clinging to her head. “Con says you do work with homeless people.”

  “Yes, that’s part of it.” He knew that much about her.

  “Where do people go when they’re homeless? Are there places they end up? Like, camps or something?”

  “There are shelters. And a few places you might find people under a tarp, or living in a vehicle. It’s nothing organized. They go wherever they can. They leave town. They turn up in emergency rooms, or jail, or the morgue. Why?”

  “So there’s nothing like, police records, anything like that.”

  The girl seemed serious, or at least, more serious than she’d been about the zombie apocalypse. “If you get arrested, there’s a record. There are social services that try to do a homeless census once a year, but it’s a difficult population to reach.” Christie waited. “Maybe if you told me what this is about?”