by Kit Reed
“First, the Sylphania profits,” the Reverend Earl said to the bookkeeping angel. This Mr. Universe clone in the special silver bike shorts read the financial report and my jaw dropped. The Sylphania profit line makes even Tiffany’s look poor, and that’s only proceeds from this particular desert spa, which, OK, I’m learning that the Reverend Earl’s holdings don’t stop with the Herbal Formula and TV time and this particular enterprise in this particular corner of the Arizona desert, they are vast.
As I crouched behind the ficus the special chosen got up in turn and gave a bunch of other reports about income from fitness centers, their line of eating-disorder clinics which they called—what?—the Ded contingent, oh right, those spooky nuns, and, surprise, profit lines on the heinous Jumbo Jigglers and ice cream parlors and fast-food chains that I never guessed they owned.
The guy in the red angel robe got up next to last and made a report so completely shrouded in code words that you’d have to be an insider to figure out what he meant. He is in charge of something called Solutions, it’s new. Note to self: Do what you have to, you need to understand this. Who or what, for instance, Solutions is. Like, are these Solutions he is talking about medical procedures or fitness programs or what. Who needs them. Why the profits are so huge. What is the function of these bequests in Column Three?
Funny. When the Reverend skimmed the table with those lighthouse eyes and asked if anybody had questions, not a one of the trainees raised his hand and nobody, especially not the guy in the white angel robe, looked up. They all stared into their laps. They kept their heads down and their eyes shuttered, like they were afraid to meet his glare.
“Now,” the Reverend said, “the international Herbal Compound breakdown.” He turned to the special precious chosen one sitting on his right, in spite of the angel robe his face was gray and he had a haunted look. “As you all know, Gavin Patenaude has flown up. All the way up, but that’s another story which maybe someday some of you will be holy enough to know. Meanwhile, from now on those of you in Life Support Systems will be reporting to him. The details, Gavin, please.”
Interesting, the guy who got up to read had a gold wing pinned to the shoulder of his robe, so I guess he’s quite a few notches higher on the food chain than our Nigel which, OK, it made me feel good. I might also add that the driven, haggard look on the new archangel’s face told me that at his level, the responsibilities here are a little heavier than I thought, which also made me feel good. As he began the accounting I leaned forward with my jaw cracked wide to take in the details and—shit! I slipped.
I lost my balance and when I righted myself the jolt started the ficus trembling. Every leaf shivered and turned, but if you didn’t happen to look this way and see me, maybe you’d think it was only the wind and thank God nobody did. Then. Why do I think he smelled me? Does hatred give off fumes?
No!
Nigel swiveled my way. Our eyes locked the way people’s do when you are magnetized by dislike. He goggled like a fish in a tank. Not breathing, I mouthed, please. And just when I was about to hear the bottom line on this fucking Herbal Compound that they have us and everybody else in America mainlining breakfast lunch and Christmas, plus maybe find out what was with the precious red pills; just when I was about to get to the truth of this place, the bastard blew the whistle on me.
“Intruder,” Nigel shouted.
I bolted. “No!”
He hurled himself after me. I tried to run. “I’ve got him,” he yelled as he body-checked me and brought me down.
“Hogs,” I spat as they dragged me out, “you preach thin and you stuff yourselves like hogs.”
And the leader I trusted, whose promises brought me here? He looked at me with the smug, condescending smile of the physically perfect. “Breakfast is our one indulgence,” the Reverend Earl said.
Night
We have a plan. Yesterday while we scraped the dishes Zoe and I established the routines: what time the Sylphania kitchen shuts down, when exactly the daytimers split for home while we finish_up and take the garbage out, and what time it is when we unload the last dishwasher and mop the floor and stumble into the bunkroom so we can fall into bed. Why are there a dozen empty bunks in the back room when it’s just us two? I don’t know. Why do the trucks come every morning and unload more supplies than the kitchen needs in a normal day? There’s more going on here than lean steaks and crabmeat sandwiches and clever salads for craft services at the Reverend’s shoots.
“OK,” Zoe whispered. We were so wiped that we collapsed on opposite bunks. “By now you know where I got the food.”
“Not really. Why are we whispering?”
“Look.” She cracked the door. “The special shift.”
“What?”
“Same time every night,” she whispered.
I turned to her, astonished. “You’ve been here before.”
She didn’t deny it. She shushed me, whispering, “Don’t ask me how I know.”
The night shift came in the back door I had thought was doubled locked. There were only two, hefty, capable women in hairnets and brown coveralls with the sleeves rolled up above the elbows to expose their strong hands and brawny forearms. As I watched they worked quietly, opening a hidden locker secreted behind the cookbook shelves. The wall swung out and the door to the locker fell open revealing riches: a turkey and a ham and gallons of butter and sugar and cream. With the precision of an expert, one worker stuffed the turkey and dressed the ham and put both beautiful beasts in to roast, and the fumes? I thought I would die. Swiftly, the other mixed giant batches of cheesecake batter and chocolate cookie dough. Although Zoe and I go to bed hungry every night, broken in spirit and too tired to talk, it seems wonderful things happen here and now that the last of the drugs have worn off, we are alert to them. The Reverend Earl’s kitchen is like a hothouse; by night, rich dinners grow. The smell was glorious. I pressed my face to the crack in the door and dreamed. Zoe whispered, “Ssst.”
I jerked awake, flailing. “What, what? Zoe, don’t, they’ll hear us!”
“No they won’t,” she whispered. “They’re gone.”
“Gone!”
She pointed to the open door.
“But I was watching the whole time!”
“No you weren’t, you were sleeping. Now hurry. Come on.” She guided me through the darkened kitchen like a lover leading a sleepwalker to bed. We were at the door.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
Tiptoeing—have I mentioned about how when you’re, um, bigger, you learn to walk lightly so people won’t notice how big you are? Tiptoeing, we went out. Ahead of us on the path, the special shift rolled a food cart downhill in the dark. They were heading for the low-slung metal building at the bottom of the hill, which I assumed was a barn. At the door, one zipped a key card and the door rolled aside. A triangle of light blazed on the path.
“The barn?”
“Sort of.”
“They’re feeding the pigs?”
“Not exactly.” My Zoe dropped behind a patch of yucca and pulled me down next to her. “Watch.”
“What are they—”
“Shh. Not now. It isn’t safe.”
We watched them disappear into the building and roll the door shut. We heard the tumblers click. “What are we waiting for?”
She didn’t answer. “See?”
There were visions chasing through my head, buzzwords and images conjured up by the morning’s meeting. “Zoe, what is this place?”
“The food,” she said in a voice so soft that I wanted to fall down and go to sleep in it. “This is where I got the food.”
“Then why don’t we …” Go in and get some. I couldn’t finish. My belly was trembling with the possibilities. If this is where the beautiful food of our courtship came from, I wanted to break down the door to the barn and force my way in. I wanted to fall down with my wonderful Zoe and be in love all over again.
“Can’t,” she said.
“We’re going.”
“Where?”
Her voice sank like a stone. “Back.”
“But I want …” I don’t know what I wanted. Her. The food they carried. Power. Everything.
“We need to get back before they come out and catch us,” she said.
“The hell with this. I love you. Let’s run away.”
She wheeled. “The fence. The sanctions. Jerry, the guards.”
“We can’t stay here.” I meant, We can’t live like this. I was angry, I was angry because I was sick of working for nothing and sick of sneaking around, I was sick of being treated like the unholy dregs and above everything, I was sick being hungry all the time. “We fucking can’t!”
“Shh.” She sealed my mouth with her fingers. “Now that you’ve seen it, we can start planning.”
“I love you, Zoe, but I don’t understand.”
“That’s part of the problem,” she said. “You don’t understand, but you will.” She broke off. “Hurry. They’re coming. Come away now, and I promise. Tomorrow night we go in.”
“How are we going to …”
Risky as it was, she giggled. “Do you believe what works? My Discover card.”
24
“You don’t know who I am, do you?” Splendid in spangled tights, the tiny woman with the big hair rushes the twins and Dave Berman along like an expert cutting horse. She intercepted them at the clinic door just now and moved them out before they could ask her what she was doing or who in hell she was. Is she yet another renegade religious, part of the underground railroad? She sure as hell doesn’t look like one. She’s wrangled them into a back hallway far from the main floor of the Crossed Triceps, where all the action is. She did it so fast that there was no time to ask why now, why this and why the hurry.
Trotting ahead as the little woman goes along behind, wigwagging , her arms to keep them clumped and moving, Danny glares at her over his shoulder. “What are you, like, a bouncer?”
“Danny, watch out!” Her twin hits the end of the hall with a smack and Betz winces.
“Idiots, haven’t you learned anything?” Their glittering wrangler presses the universal remote swinging from a lanyard around her neck and the wall Danny hit pops open. They burst out of the building, gasping, like so many bucking broncos coming out of the chute at the Pro Rodeo in Durango.
Dave barks, “What are you, throwing us out?”
“I knew it. You don’t know who I am.”
Betz tries, “Manager? Look, lady, we didn’t mean to spy, we just—” “Customer?”
“You don’t have a clue.”
The trio from home is beached in the parking lot, fresh out of words and blinking hard under the pink glow of sodium-vapor lights which—some time between late afternoon when they went into the building and now—came on as the sun dropped, turning off the daylight.
“Do you?” For emphasis, the trim-looking woman in tights thumps Dave on the shoulder. In spite of her age, whatever that is, their wrangler is so strong that the blow jolts him into a little half-turn so they are facing.
“Not really.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Brushing back glossy blonde hair, she sighs. “I won’t be around much longer anyway.”
In seconds, the little powerhouse who scooped them up and rushed them out of the Crossed Triceps has gone from forceful to despondent. Where her face seemed bright a second ago it’s begun to sag; her shoulders sag. It’s like watching an action figure melting in a microwave. Troubled, Betz says, “Excuse me, Ma’am.”
“Gloria.” The name comes out in a dying fall. “Gloria Katz.”
“Excuse me, Gloria, but where’s that coming from?”
“Where’s what coming from?”
“You sound so bummed.”
Dave says, “Like, what’s wrong?”
“It’s called facing facts, dear.”
Danny adds, “And why did you chase us out of there?”
This is bad. The sigh is bad. Like the woman has forgotten what she was doing. “I wasn’t chasing you.”
“So what were you, rescuing us?”
Betz tries to soften her twin’s sarcasm, saying, “Guys, they warned us it wasn’t safe.”
“Not safe?” Gloria wheels. In this light she could be any age, but her voice is getting old as they stand here watching. “Not safe? Look, it’s perfectly safe. For you, just not for me. I was … Oh hell, maybe I was protecting you, in a way. Or maybe.” Sigh! “Maybe I just wanted somebody to tell.”
“Tell what?”
Instead of answering, she blinks as if she can’t remember.
“Ma’am,” Dave says carefully, “what are you trying to tell us?”
“Hush. Please. Not here.”
This Gloria jabs at the remote hanging around her neck like a gym teacher’s whistle and an oversized SUV beeps back at her. She lifts her head and moves them along to the car. It’s a black Ne Plus Ultra with darkened windows, and when the sliding door rolls open with a plushy click, Betz notes that the thing is big enough inside to hold the four of them and Dave’s car, in a pinch. These things are so expensive that she’s never seen one up close before. In spite of which there is a pine-tree air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror and the driver’s seat is raised by four Manhattan phone books. Their guide is tapping her foot. “Well?”
“You want us to … What?”
“Get in.”
“Why?”
Dave is already climbing into the back. Sticking his head out the door, he grins at Betz. “Why not?”
How could she not follow?
Shaking his head, Danny gets into the copilot’s seat while on the other side, Gloria scrambles up on her stack of phone books like a monkey scaling a wall and buckles herself in. Even with the arrangement, she has to crane to see over the wheel.
Before they can discuss whether this is a smart move or a dumb move, Gloria starts the motor. “Don’t worry,” she says, “we’re not going far.”
“But where are we going?”
She hits the gas with a croquet mallet and the SUV glides out of the parking lot. “Someplace we can talk.”
Wary, Dave says, “But you’ll bring us back, right?”
“Sure. That is, if you want to come back.”
“What are you trying to tell us?”
If this woman Gloria was upset about something back there at the Crossed Triceps, she seems to be over it. Now that they’re moving, she is all business. “There’s something you should know.”
“This is nice of you,” Betz says, “but we don’t have time for any side trips. We’re looking for the … I mean …” She breaks off. Better not say “underground railroad.” Theophane: It isn’t safe. That means trust no one, until their next contact reveals himself. She says politely, “There’s um, this thing we have to do?”
Gloria looks around the back of the seat at Betz. “This won’t take long.”
“We don’t have much time.”
“Don’t worry, sweetie,” she says in an us-girls tone. “It’s no big thing, OK?”
“But what do you want?”
“I don’t want much.”
“Ma’am!”
“I just want you to listen.”
“You couldn’t just talk to us back at the place?”
“Nope. Too risky.” She stops the car in the lee of a red sandstone formation. The moon is up and the shadow the craggy rock casts on the sand is so dark that it’s as if the SUV has disappeared completely. “But I have to be sure you’re with me on this.”
There is a long pause. They let out a communal sigh.
“So. Are you with me or not?”
Are they? They need to talk about it, but … in an airtight SUV with weird Gloria listening?
“So, are you? With me? Come on, I need some input here.”
Betz shifts in her seat. Next to her in the dark, Dave is studying his fingernails. In front, Danny hums under his breath. Everybody’s waiting for somebody else to start, b
ut nobody knows what to say. Like bored students, the three kids who have come so far from home sit and wait for this part to be over.
“All right,” Gloria says finally. “If you children aren’t going to talk, at least you can listen.”
“We’re not children.”
“To me you are.”
“But we’re not.” Dave slaps the door frame for emphasis.
“I’m sorry. Let me put it another way. We’re not going back until you hear what I have to tell you. Get it?”
“Got it.”
“Yes Ma’am.”
“Girly, I haven’t heard from you yet.”
“OK, Gloria.”
“All right.” Now that she has them where she wants them, Gloria faces front, apparently looking for words. She’s having a hard time plucking them out of the dark. At last she makes a half-turn in her seat so Danny can see and the two in the back can see and she says, “What I’m trying to say is … Oh, God this is tough.”
“I’m sorry:”
“Sweet girl,” she says to Betz. “OK. Here’s a start. Do you know where grandparents go?”
Like an A student, Dave answers, “Traveling.”
The twins don’t need to fish for the answer. Everybody knows. “Traveling.” It’s true. They do. Betz believes it’s what all old people save up for, so they can go off to China and stuff after they quit working.
“How do you know?”
“We get terrific postcards from all these foreign places.”
“Yeah,” Gloria says, “but have they come back?”
“Sure they have.”
“You’re sure?”
Betz has dolls from Haiti and Tamagotchis from Tokyo and a doll’s tea set of, she thinks it’s Dresden china. “Sure they do, we always get presents.”
Danny grumbles, “I’m sorry, Ma’am, I don’t see where this is going.”
“Indulge me here. Let’s stick with grandparents. Have you seen any lately?”
After some thought, Dave says, “Not really.”
“My point. So. Do you know what happens to them, when they’re off on trips? I don’t think so.” Gloria pauses and starts over. “What I’m trying to say is, do you really know where grandparents go?”
