A hand squeezed his shoulder, firm yet not too much. “Are you taking dances tonight, honey?”
A petite girl in her early twenties leaned on his chair. She wore a long wig and green contacts with black pupils that made her eyes seem as cold as alligator’s. Nonetheless, her small bra and frail frame reminded him of Sarah. Underneath the makeup, the girl might have been pretty. He wasn’t sure where to put his eyes.
“I charge four hundred, not three – that all right?” Through her alligator eyes, Colton saw how out of place he must look. A nube or not, he wasn’t going to let a girl half his age take him for a fool.
“Sorry,” he said with a short stammer, “I can only do three.” The girl didn’t flinch, maybe she didn’t hear.
“But it’s a three-for-one deal, honey.” Each honey-ending sentence slapped Colton’s face like a dead fish.
“Plenty of other folks here would take you up on this.”
She rolled her eyes and moved to the next table – a rowdy group wearing orange hardhats. Colton stood straighter in the chair. His Sprite came back accompanied by another “honey,” this time from the waitress. He held the paper cup with both hands, sipped on the diluted soda and looked in the eyes of the next dancer to come on stage, wishing she weren’t naked. Why did he think strippers could replace Sarah? Another squeeze on his shoulder, same place and strength. He turned.
“What if I do it for three hundred, honey?” Alligator eyes must have struck out with the Home Depot crew.
“Wouldn’t do that to you.”
She grimaced. “Then how come you haven’t taken a dance from anyone else?”
So Déjà Vu monitored his dance orders too? He wondered what analytics system they must have installed here. “You’re the first one who asked.”
“You want me to send another girl?”
His head shook. “No. I was leaving.” Colton gulped the last of the Sprite from the sweaty paper cup and rose from the plastic chair. What would Sarah have said if she saw him here? What would she think? Yet another “honey” hit him within two steps.
“No refill,” he said, “I’m leaving.”
“I wasn’t offering one and didn’t mean to stop you.”
Colton turned and saw a blonde with a pierced lower lip.
“Or I could talk like this if you prefer,” she said with a fake British accent, then pulled two chairs and sat in one of them.
two years and three hundred twenty nine days till defiance day (9
Sylvya hung her scrubs and shut her locker for the day. She pressed the down button on the elevator and looked down the quiet row of patient rooms along the corridor. All doors closed, no clattering of heels or squeaking of equipment wheels. The fifth floor was dozing off like a senior taking a long nap.
David and the kids were waiting at home. Dallas was going to babble about how he was adjusting to the new grade at school and Sadie was going to pester her to knit together, before Sylvya had taken off her shoes, and cuddle at her side with eyes gobbling every turn of Sylvya’s knitting hooks.
Sure, Sylvya would have to tolerate David’s presence for five minutes and hide in her study, as if doing chores, until he left the apartment. But on a positive note, since moving out of their old house, both David and the past were loosening their grip on her, one day at a time. Sylvya had spent too much of her precious life in that house. The furniture dings, the colors when you walked in, or the fast food in the fridge had served as constant reminders of the years she would never get back. She hated that house, even with the kids, and would take them to Chuck E. Cheese or hunker down at the Starbucks across the street, after work. But she had started to heal in the new apartment.
As the hospital elevator buzzed open, she hesitated and didn’t walk in. What if she checked on the patient in Room 34 one last time? Just a quick scan of his vitals. She could still catch the last Bunker Hill train, if she hustled. She liked spending time with the Room 34 patient. At first, she thought it was because his alcohol poisoning and the guard at the door tugged at her motherly instincts. Whatever… she didn’t want to overthink it and she’d have plenty of time to narrow it down on the train tonight.
The cop was playing some video game on his smart watch. He glanced at her long enough to die on the level he was on then stretched his back and, with the level lost, gave Sylvya a short nod.
“Quiet shift, I hope?” she said.
“The best.”
“I’ll be a couple of minutes.” She sailed past, her shoes playing cymbals against the quiet linoleum. Room 34 was heavy with dusk. The man’s name was Colton, she recalled, and he was sound asleep. Sylvya walked up to his bed and stood over his pillow like the Tooth Fairy looming over a sleeping child. His breathing was firm and his vitals were solid. She cracked a pleased smile, the type that didn’t show her teeth. She had salvaged this ship. The first day they had brought him in was like playing “Wheel of Fortune” with his life, where all spaces, except a couple, read “Certain Death.” A goner. A creep too, if she looked at his charts: a broken body, busted internals and a few STDs for good measure.
Against these odds, she had nurtured him to life, like a mother. But unlike the kids, whom she shared with David and their grandparents, this Colton was her sole creation. Years after the floods had drowned her desire to give to others more than she gave herself, he had proven to her she was a capable nurse and a good woman, too. And she had birthed him, all on her own: her primal right. Sylvya’s breasts felt tender and she locked the door. Still and quiet. His unshaven face swelled in her eyes and she unbuttoned her coat and rested a hand on her belt. She stretched her other hand over his sleeping face, an inch from the parted lips. His breath caressed her palm with billows of warmth. She stood erect and motionless by his bed but in her imagination she held him with unspeakable passion. The hand on her belt travelled lower. Sylvya closed her eyes.
eighteen days till defiance day (10
The Maharishi squinted at the near-perfect darkness inside the hut. He sat still until he made out the contours of a single room. Another step forward and he would have stepped in sheep feces on the dirt floor. The furniture consisted of hay bedding in one corner and a coal pit in the center. A part of him didn’t mind reconnecting with places like this. Peasant rooms rekindled his love for mother China better than any historic reenactment or hologram at the Museum of History in Shanghai. He was one of the lucky ones crisscrossing China and helping the country folk earmark the loved ones of those in the West – a most noble calling.
Nonetheless, three months of dredging from one Chengdu village to another had taken their toll. He missed his wife and son, and he missed the glass condo in Jingqiao. He could go back to them in three weeks, if he were lucky. He closed his eyes and inhaled in a string of small breaths. He was a shadow of the Maharishi, or what the Westerners called the High-Potential, before his trip began. These days, it took him extra-long to summon meditation and replace the worries for his family with inner peace. At least he could be of service to China to the best of his insignificant abilities.
The hut smelled of fish soup. An old woman squatted by the dead coal-pit on the floor, stirring a pot blackened by many other soups before this one. The Maharishi spoke in Mandarin, the only language the woman understood.
“Good morning, tai Mother.”
“Are you hungry for fish soup?”
He bowed to show respect, given he was about to decline the offer. “I am full, tai Mother. Thank you. The Party sent me to enlist you, if your name is Jie Ying.”
“I’ve been expecting you.”
The Maharishi produced a tablet from his suitcase. The device glowed in stark contrast with its non-digital surroundings. He knelt by the old woman and raised the tablet to her head. Blue laser lights scanned her face and a digital chirp confirmed her identity.
“May I guide your finger, tai Mother?” the Maharishi said and pressed the woman’s index finger against the touch screen. The blue laser re-scanned her face, the tablet ch
irped again and this time its screen turned green.
“Now I need to hold another finger to the glass, tai Mother.” The Maharishi scanned the woman’s thumb and the tablet made one final sound. Then the blue laser flicked off and the screen dimmed.
The Maharishi stood up and bowed. Jie Ying bowed in return.
“Thank you, Dianxia,” she said, “It’s an honor to help our Motherland.”
The Maharishi walked out of the hut and into the cold morning air about to be warmed by the early sun. He squinted at the light and reviewed the screen one last time before shutting down the tablet. First, he double-checked his next destination: a voter Meng Fa, seventy-nine years old, living in a village thirty miles down the river. Then, he re-read the confirmation of what Jie Ying had done: “Voting Event: Defiance Day || Citizenship: US Territory || Social Security Number: 231-010-8760 || Name: Yana Perkins || Date of Birth: December 25, 2044 || Status: Successfully Earmarked.”
seventeen days till defiance day (11
“Maggie. Good to meet you,” the blonde dancer said.
“I’m Colton.”
“You a regular here, Colton?”
He hesitated. “First-timer.”
“Yes, you are,” she said. “I would have remembered you otherwise. I’m good with faces. And you are how old?” She sounded like a primary care provider during his initial patient visit.
“Forty-three.” He should have left this place by now. The smell was making him sick. “You?”
“I’m twenty-four.”
Colton followed with the most banal question a customer could ask his stripper. “Have you been doing this long?”
“Five years. Got into it somehow.”
“You’ve got another three weeks left until we all vote and go to hell.”
“Way to murder the mood.”
“Sorry, I was –“
“Relax, Colton. I was giving you a hard time.”
“Have you voted yet?”
“Are you a Defiance Day cop or something? Like you said, I have three weeks left to earmark someone.”
Colton sighed. “Earmark. Sacrifice. What does that even mean?”
“You’re kidding, right?” Maggie put hands on his shoulders. “I get it. You must have just got up from a coma or you’ve travelled here from the past.”
His laughter joined hers. “I know what Defiance Day is.”
“No,” her exaggerated denial. “Prove it, Mr. Teleportation.”
“I do. I’m just floored by how these words have crept into the language, to help us to send each other to the slaughterhouse.” He raised both arms in the air. “But who am I to question ULE’s finest decree.”
The waitress reappeared. “Hi, sexies.” Now that he was almost a paying customer, he had graduated from a “honey” to a “sexy.” “Would you like to buy this lovely lady a drink, sir?”
Before he could reply, Maggie leaned on his shoulder. “I’d like a small Red Bull.” Her right breast nudged against his hand.
“Sure,” Colton handed over a crisp fifty-dollar bill, “one small Red Bull for her.” The waitress snatched the money like a vending machine and dashed away.
Maggie kept leaning on him. “And what do you do?”
“I work for a casino. I tweak their betting algorithms and design new gaming products for their clientele.” He didn’t expect her to understand, but she did.
“Are you trying to impress me with fifty-dollar words?”
“Am I?”
“You’re a programmer who codes the software in roulettes to make the odds worse for gamblers like me.”
He should have checked his prejudice at the door. “You got it; that’s what I do.”
“The next time I’m at the Sno and lose at roulette, I’ll know who to blame.”
“And you?” he said. “Did you pick up your British accent in London?”
The waitress reappeared with a Red Bull for Maggie and no change for Colton. The end of the world did a number on inflation, he thought.
Maggie smiled under the coat of makeup meant to give her face a mysterious look. “Never been to London,” she said. “Can’t imagine I’ll be going. Not anymore. Not with Earth being a single-country planet.”
“You still can if you want to.”
“The government of the United Lands of Earth and its high-as-a-kite capital in Mexico City doesn’t care about giving London papers to a girl like me. I can’t travel with a young son at home, anyway. This joint gives me all the fun a single mom needs.”
Colton glanced at her breasts. Under the bra they looked as small as they had felt against his palm. If she were telling the truth, her son must be older.
“You know what a pain traveling can be,” she said. “I’m lucky I like Seattle. And I wonder how the poor bastards from say, Lincoln, Nebraska must feel like, stuck in their corn-hole.” Maggie threw her head back and laughed, her neck vein pulsating with each breath and her breasts ballooning closer to his face, exposing both nipples. She fanned her fluttering eyelids with a hand. “The short of it is, I’ve never been much of a traveler, even before they closed the West Coast airports.” She wiped the corners of her eyes with a pinkie, careful not to smear the mascara. “But enough about me, Mister. You married?”
“I used to be. But she left me.”
“Good riddance. You wouldn’t be here otherwise, I take it.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have come anyway.”
“On the contrary. When’s the last time you had sex?”
“Not sure. Maybe a year.”
She looked at him with raised eyebrows. “You’re the only male I know who doesn’t rush to Screwville, with Armageddon around the corner.”
“Maybe no one’s offering.”
“I’m sure it could be arranged.” Maggie emptied the last of the Red Bull and slapped her naked knee. “Should we do what you came here to do, Colton?”
“I didn’t bring a condom.”
Maggie laughed. “I meant a lap-dance, tiger.”
“For three hundred?”
“Three hundred.” Her eyelids opened and closed, instead of a head nod. “I heard you’re hard to move on that one.” Maggie took Colton’s hand and headed for the VIP booths in the back. She adjusted him into the deep plush of a purple sofa. By the third song, she had unbuttoned his shirt and was rubbing her oiled body against his chest. Colton’s senses focused on Maggie’s warmth as the booming music receded in the background. And he let her rock him, like a doomed Titanic in the middle of a lifeless ocean. His missing Sarah didn’t go away. But he did doze off and given the circumstances, that was a win. At some point, he realized the gyrations had stopped and opened his eyes to see Maggie’s petulant smile an inch from his face. Her teeth glistened in the neon lights with almost menacing whiteness.
“I hope I didn’t put you to sleep,” she said and laughed as her fingers twisted his bare nipples. “Go on, say yes and break my heart.” Colton’s eyes paused on hers then moved to the surroundings. He stifled a groan at the realization he was still in Déjà Vu, instead of in a bad dream he could leave by waking. He lifted Maggie by the waist.
“How much?”
“How about fifteen hundred,” she said, “I danced five times and felt super comfortable with you. You had a good time too, no?”
“Is there a cash machine around?” Colton’s face was losing color by the minute.
“You don’t think I’d lie to you, right? It was five dances.” Maggie sounded almost apologetic. “I’ll show you the cash machine.” She took him by the hand and, with an unbuttoned shirt he followed. She rubbed his shoulders while he waited for the ATM to dispense money. “By the way, clients usually don’t tell me their real names,” she said, “Why did you?”
“Didn’t think not to, I guess.”
“You know,” she said. “How about you meet me after I finish work in an hour? Would be nice to spend time, like normal people.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think that ha
ving sex would be a bad idea.”
“How about a conversation and a single malt at my place?”
“Your house?” He blinked. “Isn’t it illegal to meet with clients?”
“You’ll tell on me?” Her bleached teeth winked at him again. The ATM shoved the cash against his palm and he passed the bills to Maggie without bothering to count them. She had earned it. After all, she had him fooled into forgetting Sarah, if for a moment.
“Are you really sure that’s a good idea?”
“You’re acting cute and coy. You’d almost think I’m the customer here.”
“Maggie,” he spoke her fake name for the first time. “I’m dealing with this problem that –”
“Defiance Day is a bitch, no?” she said with a tired smile. The booming music changed from a ballad to reggae. “I got to go. I’ll be done in an hour.” She sniffed and pulled on her bra. “See you outside?” She kissed him on the cheek and walked toward Déjà Vu’s main stage and neon lit up the tattoos on her back.
She met him as promised, an hour later, her stilettos rattling against the parking lot pavement like a machine gun. “Here I am.” She smiled and her teeth didn’t look menacing in the moonlight. Her face looked ten years younger without the mascara. “You ready?”
The Refugee Sentinel Page 4
