“Pretend you don’t know me,” Benny said. “I’ve got to take care of something.”
He turned around and saw Joe standing right behind him. Wow. What the hell was he doing here? The murky memory of a call to Joe’s tight-balled father, the mention that the Millhouse was his hangout now; after two nights of Substance smashing, his own motivations for calling had completely slid away from him. Right now, Joe was the last person he wanted to see.
“Where were you?” Joe said to him softly. “I waited for you.”
7.
Lance sneaked the phone numbers from Lorrie’s address book. He had looked in it plenty of times before; it wasn’t a diary, he told himself, but now his hands felt thick and ugly. Each page stuck together, and he had to lick the tips of his fingers to separate them. With every flick of tongue against skin, he felt more and more like an animal.
He wasn’t worried Lorrie might catch him in the act; she was all the way across town at a meeting of Women in the Workforce. For sister resistors who want to organize and activate like-minded sisters to resist our exclusion from industries essential to the Homeland, please come to a meeting of fellow sister resistors, stated the flyer on their coffee table. Lance understood their arguments. Why not encourage more women farmers, produce sorters, fish catchers, whatever the hell it was the Homeland needed? But though he would never say so to Lorrie, he also understood the Homeland’s desire to keep the appearance that traditionally male jobs were still held by men. After all, nothing reminded you that all the men were dying more than looking around and seeing women doing everything.
Disenchanted by the squabbling of her free-breakfast-for-veterans group—the pro-Fareon faction had taken to accusing disbelievers of being undercover agents sent to spread doubt and misinformation—Lorrie had decided to use her time differently and had now been to three Women in the Workforce meetings in two weeks. Even so, Lance had no idea what she actually did there.
Lance picked up the cracked leather booklet with the alphabet running down the right side and turned to M. Nothing under Mom or Mother. D for Dad and F for Father came up blank as well. A brief and passing rage that Lorrie should have any sort of family at all hooked in his gut. In this very moment, Lance’s own mother was probably sitting behind blackout curtains, mourning the loss of her husband and most of her sons. And here was Lorrie, ignoring the perfectly intact family that she had.
There was a rattle at the door, and Lance dropped the tiny book on the floor. A split of nausea tore a path from his stomach to his chest. Could she already be home? But wait. Women in the Workforce meetings usually went on for hours. Through the peephole he saw a tiny man with loose, twisted curls carrying a book with a bright blue cover tucked under his arm. An undercover Reggie, come to get him? Turning back toward the kitchen, he did a mental marking of his best escape route.
“What do you want?” he called through the door. In the blurred edges of the peephole he saw that the man had feminine lashes, long and straight and the color of coal.
“Can you hear it?” the man asked.
“Hear what?”
“You don’t hear anything?”
“What do you want?” Lance called again.
“I asked you what you heard. Whether you could hear that right now?”
Would a Reggie play with him like this, chanting nonsense in order to get him to open the door?
“You can’t hear because you’re not listening,” the man went on. “I can help you tune in. The voice of the Young Savior is always sounding, friend. But you’ve got to be on the right frequency.”
Quicker than he thought possible, Lance swept the door open. Reaching out, he grabbed for the man’s wrist. “That’s what you banged on my door to tell me?” As his insides burned, he felt his own hand cover that of the long-lashed man’s. “You knock on my door and scare the crap out of me to tell me that the Young Savior is talking but I can’t hear him?” He pressed the man’s thumb into the backs of his fingers and bent his own palm back toward him. The one useful thing he had learned in pre-army elective.
“Ow!” the man yelped.
Lance held the twist, fixing his eyes on the quickly spoiling veins of the man’s arm, the little raised lines pulsating euphorically. Harder, the veins whispered to Lance. Tighter. Obedient, Lance pressed into the hold.
“Hey, you’re hurting me!”
The man’s frightened tone woke Lance up. Releasing him, he slammed the door quickly.
“I’m trying to save your soul!” he heard the man shout.
Western City North was soaked with these maniacs. There was no time for proselytizers, he told himself; he was trying to save something much more real than his soul and, he was sure, much more important.
Lance gave his head a quick shake to get back on task. Her last name. Of course that was where her parents would be listed. He ran to the book and flipped through the pages. There, in Lorrie’s tight script, were both her parents’ names, listed as neutrally as the numbers for her dentist and the sergeant at arms for her radical theater group. People were on the other end of these numbers, real people who could help, who could solve the mystery of these invisible bugs, these painful scabs.
Five rings. Ten. At twelve rings, Lance hung up. Hours remained until Lorrie was due back from her meeting, still time to try again. In the extra bedroom that had her desk and his easel, Lance took out one of Lorrie’s albums at random, this one featuring an orange picture of a machine gun on the sleeve. It was time to draw.
Even through the shrimpy little portable, the music sounded awful. Aggressive horn blasts came from nowhere. A dyskinetic drummer banged jerkily on whatever objects must have been in front of him: chairs, pots, pipes. Hard, sharp blows by the saxophone player sacrificed rhythm and melody for atonal whumpings. Who could draw to this shit? He decided to smoke some Substance Q instead. Soon the soft grey smoke curled all around him.
The second time he called, Lorrie’s mother picked up on the first ring. After a brief introduction, Lance explained the situation as best he could.
Yes, we live together.
Yes, she thinks they are under her skin.
If you could not mention to Lorrie that I’ve called . . .
Of course, dear, the mother said. Thank you so much for informing me of this . . . circumstance. I’ll talk to Lorrie’s father.
It’s very serious, Lance told her.
I’m sure it is, dear.
Could you reach him at work?
I never call my husband at work. He detests being interrupted.
Could she make an exception?
She could not.
Three Q cigarettes later and the once-sharp horn blasts now played soft and chirpy from the speakers. The jerky drums had turned wet and drippy. Lance heard the door rattle. He stayed folded on the couch.
“Well, it’s all over,” Lorrie said, standing above him. “They’ve sneaked their way in.”
Again with the fucking bugs? An involuntary burst of cool smoke swirled from Lance’s nostrils.
“The infighting, all the disagreement, you know?” She licked her dry lips.
Lance coughed, an attempt to twist the high out of his mind. What the hell was she talking about? Colonies of critters weren’t having civil wars; swarms of pests didn’t sit around and hash out their differences. She went on, but the confusing curves of her conversation led nowhere, so Lance nodded silently and hoped that more words plus a few facial expressions might alleviate his total failure to understand her.
“All these new members,” she continued, “and every one of them divisive. They’ve infiltrated us for sure.”
Of course. Lance exhaled. Women in the Workforce.
“I just thought that this was a fight that—” She paused and wet her lips with her tongue.
A feeling he quickly identified as relief ripened within him. At least she wasn’t upset about the fucking bugs. He smiled up at her. “Sounds good,” he said.
Lorrie walked in the bathroom
and shut the door behind her.
Lance breathed out the sweet foresty smell of Substance Q smoke. It wasn’t all over after all.
In their small apartment, Lance entertained. Lorrie sat and smiled, but it was clear she would rather be elsewhere.
“Have a drink, Lorrie,” said Rick. Rick had one leg that was significantly shorter than the other.
“Yeah,” said Mike softly. “Have a drink.” Mike said everything softly. He had been raised in Worship Sect Q, but was still having trouble getting his status to reflect his genuine religious dedication to pacifism. Not that it mattered. Rumor was the pacifist exception would be gone by the next time First Tuesday rolled around.
“I’ve got some good Substance Q,” said Wilson. The rest of the group laughed, as Wilson always had good Substance Q. Only Tim and Rebecca, the downstairs neighbors, took him up on the offer. Lance contemplated the divine shape of Rebecca’s lips as she wrapped them around the rolled papers.
“Did you guys hear that speech that one of the Coyotes made on the floor of parliament today?” asked Lorrie.
No one had heard it, though if they still wanted to, there would be plenty of opportunities. In that very moment, it was probably being replayed on ten channels and analyzed on ten more.
“That was a big speech,” she berated them. “An important one.”
Her guests nodded, but Lance could see that they were weary. Every speech was advertised as important. As a result, all of them were meaningless.
Lance tried to catch Lorrie’s eye, an attempt to toss her a calm down look that would better capture the tone of the room. Instead, he saw her swallow, followed by the brief tremble of her lower lip. Of course, Lance thought. She was just getting started. Lorrie’s zeal didn’t recognize the need for a cold beer, a sloppy wet Substance Q cigarette while some good tunes played, not with talk of Substance-smashing soldiers chopping off Foreign fingers while smoothly aging lawmakers cheered them on from the parliament floor.
“I bet she’s going to ask us about Fareon next,” said Norman. A few of the others giggled, but Norman did not. Norman was Lance’s most perceptive friend, though also his most obscure and maddening. How Norman wasn’t snapped up, Lance had no idea, but the futile task of getting a clear answer from him demanded a level of commitment that Lance did not possess.
“I want to hear her question,” said Tim. Tim always wanted to hear Lorrie’s next question.
“What do you think I’m going to ask?” Lorrie’s first smile of the night.
“About Fareon?” Norman said. “You’ll probably set us up with some wording designed to lead us to the idea that the whispers of extended life are state-perpetuated rumors designed to distract us. Disinformation to keep us in thrall at the power of the state and all that.”
“Sounds right to me,” said Tim.
“Then,” said the ever-perceptive Norman, “you’ll circle back to the Coyotes. Should we embrace their timid, centrist plan to slowly scale down the war?”
Lorrie nodded, impressed. “Go on.”
“How about another beer?” said Rick.
“Me too,” said Mike, though no one heard him.
“And after we all agree how weak the Coyotes are,” Norman continued, “you’ll go into questions about tactics. What do we do about the recent surge of attacks inside the Homeland? Were they carried out by Foreign sleeper cells? People like us who’ve had it up to here? We all know those attacks make it hard on the Coyotes. But maybe it’s because they’re so timid. So you’ll bring up whether we should be fighting to replace the Coyotes, who probably have less than ten members anyway, or give them more political support so the rumored hordes of cowardly legislators who secretly support them can feel all emboldened and shit.”
“Not bad,” said Lorrie.
“And if we really got into it,” Norman said, “you could point to fifty op-eds for your side, and I could point to twice that against.”
“About those beers—” said Rick.
Lance nodded and headed toward the kitchen.
“And finally,” Norman continued, “you’ll somehow combine these mysterious domestic attacks on the Homeland, the tepid protests of the Coyotes, and the insane mysteries of Fareon to that new women’s group of yours. ‘Don’t you miss strawberries?’ you’ll ask us. ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to pop an orange wedge into your mouth?’ But how it’s all connected, well, I’ve got nothing.”
“But it is!” Lorrie said. “You see—”
“Where’s that other six-pack?” yelled Lance from the kitchen. With all the blackouts, keeping beer in the fridge was meaningless. Lorrie called out a few guesses over her shoulder, but by the time she returned her attention to the group, the conversation had moved on.
Wilson squinted and breathed in a long, ragged pull of Substance Q. “You guys hear about the latest attack over in Quadrant Four?”
A few people shook their heads.
“What was it?” said Lorrie. “Another homemade bomb?”
“See, this is the weird thing,” said Wilson. “It wasn’t a bomb, wasn’t an explosion. It was charcoal.”
“Charcoal?”
“Whoever it was, they broke into some Registry parking lot and filled the insides of all the vehicles with charcoal. Top to bottom.”
“And?”
“And that’s it. Just a bunch of armored trucks filled with charcoal.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Maybe the Foreigns just ran out of stuff to make bombs with,” said Wilson.
“Or maybe,” said Lorrie, “it wasn’t the Foreigns.”
“Of course it was the Foreigns,” said Lance. “No matter how much you hate the war, you’re not going to attack your own country.”
“Can we talk in the kitchen?” Lorrie turned to him.
What the hell was it now? The two of them headed to the kitchen.
“Kick these people out soon,” she whispered. “WIT has an important meeting in the morning.”
Lance smiled and reminded himself not to bring up yet again what a terrible acronym WIT was, as it left off the second W of the workforce entirely. He almost told her to relax, but he quickly caught himself. Relax? she would say. He knew that she would tell him that this was not a year for relaxation and that next year wouldn’t be, either.
Once the letters started coming, they didn’t stop. Back home, Lance’s Registry board wanted him to drop in for a physical and was now sending sour ultimatums to his mother demanding he show his face. Ridiculous. Even if Lance had wanted to, he didn’t have the Currencies to make his way back to his hometown. He made a note to himself to write the Registry and explain that he had moved on, that he was in Western Sector now, and that they should update their records. Also, he might write, please stop sending letters to my mother’s house. She is still in grief at the unique disappointments provided by the deaths of her favorite sons and the unending questions regarding her absent husband. Leave her alone. We barely talk anymore. Best, Lance Sheets, new resident, Western City North.
Instead, Lance never got around to asking them to update their records, and his mother, he imagined, must have allowed the increasingly frantic missives to pile up on the inbuilt ledge of her hallway. Lance had no idea whether she understood what they were and where he was. Probably, she thought he had just missed church for a chunk of time. Every few weeks one of his brothers’ widows would come around and see an official-looking letter with his name on it, shake the dust off, and send it his way. By the time they made it out to Western City North, the Registry had already sent a newer, angrier version.
One night, after Lorrie insisted on sending yet another handful of Currencies to the hot wash, Lance struck her. He was not hitting Lorrie, he told himself, but forcing the lice to come pouring out of her in order to return her to him. Lorrie no longer seemed to like her body, and Lance thought he could hate it, too.
Once Lance had crossed the sick threshold of striking the first blow, a thought emerged: each wha
ck to the side of her head would spill the bugs out of her. She was too beautiful, Lance raged, for these lice, for these community meetings where pastors and cops yelled and shouted, too beautiful for the wars that were happening and the wars that had been. Too beautiful, his sharp blood screamed, for all the sick events unfolding in and around her.
Later, the bruises mingled with the open sores of her scratches until it was impossible to tell the difference. So concentrated was Lorrie on the infestation and Women in the Workforce that they never talked about the night of violence that had opened up between them. She had not threatened to leave. Eyeing his latest letter from the Registry, Lance thought, it suddenly seemed much more likely that it was he who would be leaving instead.
Her mother and father showed up at his apartment door, curled their noses at the Neutral Country P smells that lingered in the hallway, and cultivated their worry in an approach that Lance was sure would swallow Lorrie’s final threads of sanity.
“Welcome to Western City North,” Lance greeted them. “The edge of the Homeland.”
“Right,” said her father. He ignored Lance’s hand and brushed past him into the apartment.
“Hmmmph,” they said. “Tsssk,” their tongues went, the heavy air whistling through their scaly teeth. “Bugs!” they exclaimed to one another at random moments when Lorrie was out of earshot. “Under her skin!” Neither of them seemed to care what they said in front of Lance.
Cures and true bed rest, the parents said, could only come from Interior City lakes and the undirected friendliness of the people who made honest lives around their banks. The Western City North winters—sea-sprayed with bursts of sunshine—made the parents suspicious. The inhabitants of this city, they seemed to think, were barely citizens of the Homeland at all. “So dirty!” they said of the streets. “So dangerous!” they said of the latest attacks.
“But we never go to that part of the city,” Lance tried to explain.
“Of course not,” her mother said. “It’s much too dangerous.”
This Is the Night Page 8
