by Nisi Shawl
“You should’ve seen Carnival this morning. We put on a show for the whole Valley.” Cinnamon cringed. Did salesmen have time for Carnival? “You both water-war refugees?”
“Yeah, so?” Carlos snapped at her. “The past is not important.”
Who else their age would be desperate enough to take this ridiculous job? Risky too—angry bad boys in the hill towns regularly went out hunting somebody to blame.Salesmen were low-hanging fruit.
Carlos gritted his teeth. “I’m living tomorrow now. So should you. Buy on credit.”
“I like today just fine. Yesterday give me a good feeling too.” Cinnamon let self-righteousness flow for a second. “Progress is an illusion. A marketing ploy.”
Dirt kicked up behind Carlos. One of the inflatables had refused to blow up. Gas was hissing through the spring herb garden instead of doing its job on a wad of limp plastic. Carlos dropped to the ground, fussing and cussing at valves and tiny pumps.
Barbett Blues whispered sweetly to Cinnamon who didn’t understand much except, “Old lady, alone, bad.” He was talk-singing—an astral-bop riff in that unfamiliar accent. “Scared? You?” Barbett chanted.
“Should I be? You planning an ambush?” Cinnamon put her hands on hefty hips. The feathers on her shoulders curled into thin blades. Barbett’s eyes got wide. “Some folks are more cloud than storm. Not me,” Cinnamon sounded as country and throwback as possible. Not an act—she had Georgia roots by way of Chicago and Pittsburgh, transplanted to Massachusetts.
“Here come future.” Barbett pointed at the inflatables. “Start small, lonely no more.”
“I told you. I’m not alone,” Cinnamon said.
“They pay us not to listen.” Carlos pulled a tiny tool kit from his bag.
“Well, look.” Cinnamon nodded at the spirit garden surrounding the fieldstone terrace. Coming up to the house, the salesmen had walked through a half circle of wooden statues—West African deities: Shango, Yemaya, Oshun, Obatala, and Eshu. Granddaddy Aidan carved these spirit figures for Taiwo. Barbett stood near Mami Wata, African queen mother of the waters, who soaked up sun for her ocean spray of LED lights. Cinnamon had built Mami Wata from a hunk of recycling junk.
“Voodoo-hoodoo.” Barbett hopped from one foot to the other. Miz Redwood, Cinnamon’s grandmother, had done hoodoo hot-foot spells all around the house.
“Nobody believes in that.” Carlos checked valves and hoses on the pumps. “People be hoodooing their own selves.” He sounded like Miz Redwood was talking through him for a moment. “Stop.”
Barbett stepped out of the loafers into the crabgrass to cool his feet. The maple trees rustled in a private breeze. Everything else was still. Tiny red flowers and leaf buds glistened with late afternoon fog. Granddaddy Aidan and Miz Redwood built the dumb house in a warm hollow, near Great Aunt Iris’s favorite spot to collect roots. A foggy clump of shade looked like Aunt Iris, hunched in dead weeds and talking wind words. Barbett and Klaus gasped. The elders had promised to haunt Cinnamon, and she let them. They haunted desperadoes and other fools trying to mess with her too.
“You’d be surprised who all keeps me company,” Cinnamon said.
“I don’t think so.” Carlos tightened one last valve. Barbett stepped back in his shoes.
“You two met Taiwo at the gate.” Cinnamon enjoyed telling this story. “Almost a hundred fifty years on this Earth. How long in other dimensions is an open question.” Taiwo was out there, somewhere, doing who knows what, yet the old African and a brigade of warrior-women haints were never far when danger lurked. “Monster always on the case,” Cinnamon whispered.
Carlos spritzed a tiny hose with sealant. “Word on the road is that Taiwo has totaled trucks, sent armed thugs packing, and brought comatose bad boys back from the dead. He? She? uses alien tech from another dimension and juju learned in West Africa from the Yoruba, Fon, and Igbo—tribes over there.”
“You’re well-informed.” Cinnamon rubbed her nose. Too well-informed, really. Maybe these intrepid salesmen had come to check up on the wild stories. “Why did Taiwo let you through?”
“Green. No waste water.” Barbett waved a flyer of stats for a smart toilet, talk-singing. “Why flush good data?”
“Fixed!” Carlos jumped up in front of a three-dimensional print shop bouncing close to the herbs now. “A home factory where you might make a doll of yourself or, or anybody you love.”
“No way!”
Carlos clutched his chest and got paler. He looked like he might fall over.
“You guys got the wrong ZIP Code or the wrong sales pitch or both. I’m not your target audience.” She shook her head at the inflatables bobbing in the breeze: a food processor, climate system, virtual shopping mall, game and entertainment center, med unit, and a sex suite with vibrators, massage slings, and purple dragon dildos. Mobile cameras, mics, and dust angels floated everywhere, sweeping up allergens, dead skin, and intimate data. The toilet was talking to the fridge and the microwave, and set to broadcast—Big Data laws be damned. Cinnamon groaned. They were selling ancient tech, from before 2020. This might be warehouse stock that never sold and cost too much to take apart and throw out. Or maybe it was toxic shit that got recalled. Cinnamon glared at a purple dragon dildo. It made her feel like a prude and a little horny, or actually lonely.
Carlos wagged a finger at her. “See anything you like?”
“No.” Cinnamon folded her arms across her breasts, feelers flailing and feathers bristling. Barbett reached across Carlos, touched a sharp edge, and sliced a finger. Cinnamon jumped back. “Pack that crap up. Walk on back to the gate. Tell Taiwo I don’t need company.” She stomped up the stairs to the greenhouse. Taiwo would be up all night, sweeping the whole area for spy tech left behind, not Cinnamon.
“Leave. Now!” Cinnamon shouted over her shoulder. She’d wasted enough time and most of her decent mood. Feeling good was too precious, too rare. “Trust me. I do have a monster on call.” She shoved the greenhouse door toward the sill.
Carlos stuck his foot in the crack and got up in her face. “What about a special offer tailored just for you?” He and Cinnamon were about the same height and he was as muscled and strong as she was. Fine wrinkles around his eyes and lips looked like he used to laugh a lot. No lips to speak of but they curved into a foolish grin. Cinnamon smashed the door against his purple shoe. Carlos yelped, and the door bounced back, almost knocking her down.
Cinnamon rubbed her forehead and smacked the door. “Whose side are you on?”
“Yours. Look.” Carlos unfolded an array of tiny gadgets on a sheet of flexible plastic: beady little camera eyes on everything, ladybug speakers and mics, storage chips as thin as a strand of hair, or maybe those were sensors. State-of-the-art gear. A Wi-Fi virtual-reality rig had sleek silver goggles and plush ear cups on a sparkly tiara. A row of crystal data cubes made rainbows like the jewel-eyes on her demon thighs. These cubes were Cinnamon’s design. Consolidated was still getting rich off her whimsy.
“Fifty percent off.” Carlos was relentless. “This afternoon only.” They were trying to sell her own tech to her. Irony was a killer. “You can’t beat that.”
Cinnamon shook her head.
Carlos was breathless. “Free installation plus we can waive the cable connection fee.”
“No cable out here. It’s the ancient phone line, a satellite, or that cell tower.” She pointed to the nearby mountain range. A metal tree with antennae, receivers, and processors was camouflaged as a strapping elm giant. A ghost tree. “Consolidated owns the sky, the airways…” She scanned above them for drones. “I have nothing worth stealing. What’s your game? Who are you really?”
Carlos clamped a hand over the sword pin on his paisley tie. “Even the algorithm doesn’t know who the fuck I am.” He dropped his hand and got back on script, back on charm. “We can start installation immediately. Let us make your today great.”
“I love my dumb house. My grandparents built it—straw bales, solar power, and hoodo
o conjure. I don’t let just every pushy body inside.” Rage flared. “I’m the guardian of this gate.” She shoved Carlos and Barbett down the steps. They scrambled to protect their newfangled electric delights. Bruja, border collie witch-dog, barged through the inflatables snarling and snapping at the bouncing wonders. She was late to the party. Some watchdog.
“Dog bite?” Barbette exchanged desperate looks with Carlos. “Witch-dog worse than ghost-dog.”
“You know Spook?” Ghost-dog was Taiwo’s eyes, ears, and nose on the prowl. Hardly anybody ever saw Spook. He was a creature of myth and legend. They’d done deep research. Cinnamon whistled. Bruja trotted over and looked her brown eye and blue eye at Cinnamon, ready to bust big balloons if given the command, ready to do worse too. “Bruja doesn’t like strangers any better than I do.” The salesmen didn’t start packing up like they had any kind of sense. Whatever algorithm was running their mission had made unreasonable demands.
“Sixty percent off.” Carlos let irritation leak. The mask was cracking. “Free upgrades for four months. No rate hikes for six months. No payments for twelve. A totally discount future!”
“I don’t care if you’re giving it away.” Cinnamon offered a sweet smile. “You guys are worse than chewing gum and super glue.”
Carlos clutched the sword tiepin again. “Just let us in. We’ll explain everything.” The accent came back. German. “Please.”
Barbett clutched his tie-pin too. “Good story.”
“You think I’m a fool?” Cinnamon was curious despite her suspicions. They dropped their hands. “You recording this right now and streaming it to home base?”
Carlos waved a hand in the air. “Quality control, to help improve service.”
Barbett spit strange words in his ear.
“Why does he talk so weird? Tell me that at least.”
“Not he. Gender free.” Barbett was defiant. “Identity hard to hold in English.”
Carlos talked over Barbett. “No payments for a year. Use all this gear, free. How can you refuse?”
“Nothing’s free.” Cinnamon shook her head. Why keep arguing with them? She did have a soft spot for old thespians and there was something else about them, something she should remember.
“Paranoia prevents you from enjoying progress.” Carlos ventured too close. Bruja nipped at his heels. He danced away from her growl and tripped into the inflatable sex suite. The VR-tiara punctured a dragon dildo and the exhibit hissed and shriveled around him. Cinnamon gripped Bruja before she lunged. Carlos scrambled for balance. “They’re firing us today, if we don’t get a sale—” He clutched his heart and crumpled. His splotchy face landed in a cluster of bluebells.
Barbett crouched down quickly and turned Carlos over. The stingy brim fedora rolled into the forsythia bushes. Barbett brushed flowers and dirt from Carlos’s face, put a pill under his tongue and an ear to his chest. The feathers and feelers on Cinnamon’s demon costume softened, fluttering in the breeze. Bruja whined and struggled.
“So you like him now.” Cinnamon let her go. The witch-dog ran to Carlos and licked blotchy cheeks. Cinnamon stepped close. Carlos’s eyes rolled up in his head. Fear streaked across her nerves. This was real. “Is he having a heart attack or something?”
“Or something.” Barbette ground gleaming teeth. “Dumb car blows out at gate.”
“Ah, can’t fix itself.” Cinnamon squatted down and touched a clammy neck. She barely felt a pulse. “I don’t have a car up here. You should call somebody.”
“Cell wrecked.” Barbett held up a mangled phone. “His too.”
“Damn.” Cinnamon’s cell was in the microwave, dead to the world. The nearest Co-op neighbor with a car was a few miles away. This stupid scenario was the heart of their sales pitch. Cinnamon hated irony. “I’ll call for help.”
She sprinted to the garage. The landline and computer lived on a table among her pedal-people bikes and trailers. She’d haul Carlos to the gate if need be. Unblocking the main road would take forever. The dial tone was a relief. Bill paid, service yet to be phased out. She punched the emergency number then argued with a dispatcher half way round the world or maybe in Arizona. Consolidated never paid health expenses for salesmen. So Cinnamon lied and offered an Electric Paradise account. She still had an expense line from debugging the Valley security system last week. She slammed the phone down. An ambulance was going to cost a fortune and take forever to get there.
Carlos could die in the meantime.
Cinnamon raced back from the garage, smacking the inflatables out of her way. She needed a defibrillator, not a sex suite. The sun was still blasting heat, even at a low angle. Sweat collected in her hollows, curves, and creases. Bruja curled close to Carlos, panting to stay cool. Treading on Miz Redwood’s spells, Cinnamon’s feet burned. She was hoodooing herself.
“They’re coming,” she said. “Taiwo will let us know when they reach the gate.”
“We can’t pay,” Barbett said.
“I paid for the wheels. The Co-ops set up a free clinic at the Ghost Mall. There’s a bed for you in the shelter. You’ll be fine.” Cinnamon fought nasty suspicion with logic. Salesmen were amateur spies, dirt-cheap labor collecting random data. Salesmen wouldn’t stage a heart attack on her steps. Live-action melodrama was for pros—corporate espionage. No reason to spend so many live minutes on Cinnamon.
“He is breath,” Barbett talk-sang and patted Carlos’s chest tenderly, as if they were more than colleagues. “All heart. Good heart.”
“Uh huh.” Cinnamon’s heart pounded.
Carlos gulped a raggedy breath through bloodless lips.
“Oh, all right.” Cinnamon relented. “The garage is an oven. We take him into the house to wait. It’s cool.”
She undid Carlos’s tie and tossed it in a can of storm water and fertilizer dung. She snatched Barbett’s tie too. “You look a little peaked yourself.” She threw the spy gear into the birdbath. Barbette shook off the fedora. A mane of black and grey skinny braids tumbled free. A familiar smirk lurked behind an excellent make-up job. Recognition smacked Cinnamon so hard, she almost fell down next to Carlos. Name aphasia made her want to scream, but they were lifting Carlos and stumbling toward the greenhouse. He was heavy and hot and familiar too. Older yes, but how had she missed who they were? They recognized her for sure.
Cinnamon halted at the steps to the greenhouse. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
“Inside. Sun too hot. Too heavy for talking.”
Bruja herded them up the steps and into the greenhouse. When they reached the irises, the witch-dog raced back and jumped against the door. The hinges creaked and hollered, then the damn thing closed easily behind them.
IT WAS TWENTY degrees cooler in the open room at the center of the dumb house—always temperate, thanks to straw bale walls. Pots of lavender and jasmine cleaned and soothed the air. Spider plants cascaded out of hanging bowls and snake plants crowded the corners, clearing toxins too. Creature and demon costumes hung from the mantle and molding hooks. Masks peeked from the shelves. Half-finished props were scattered across the dining table: birds, shields, wands, boulders, staffs, and a flying-carpet drone that broke more often than it flew. Photos and otherworldly paintings from Cinnamon’s old life, her good life, graced the walls. Rag rugs from Aunt Iris cushioned tired feet. Granddaddy Aidan had crafted chairs, tables, and a big sofa. Miz Redwood stuffed the pillows. Cinnamon’s demon mask perched on the back of the sofa, grinning as they deposited Carlos on the firm cushions.
Cinnamon sucked a deep breath and grabbed the mask. The hair was a scratchy thicket of brambles and thorns. Lightning bolts on the cheeks sparked and fiber optic eyes smoldered. She set the mask on the dining table and shut the hallway doors, revealing Taiwo’s altar to Eshu, crossroads deity, trickster always messing in people’s lives. Taiwo’s chant still echoed through the house:
Who do you mean to be?
I am Guardian at the Gates
Master of uncertainty
The cat that be dead and not dead
The electron, the pulse, everywhere at once
And nowhere too
“What is that?” Barbett who wasn’t Barbett said. “What am I hearing?”
“Taiwo.” Cinnamon was about to burst.
The old African wouldn’t waste words on just anybody.
“Taiwo, talking all the way from the gate?”
Cinnamon closed the sky light. “This morning’s prayer. Lingering. Till there’s another prayer.” A constellation of LED lights on the ceiling and walls glowed softly and banished the sudden dark. “Inside here is a Faraday fortress. No signals in or out. We can say anything.” But she didn’t know what to say or think or feel. “Marie? Marie Masuda? Is that you?”
“Of course.” Marie spat wads of cotton from her cheeks and mopped goop from her face onto a once-white handkerchief. “Damn! Who else would I be?” Marie was still snarky.
“So why the masquerade?”
“Salesmen can’t reveal true identities. You lose your commissions and get fired.”
“Oh.” Cinnamon held out a recycling basket for make-up refuse. “Are you really genderqueer?”
Marie shrugged. “Probably, but I don’t mind she. Too old for new pronouns.”
“Not if you rehearse. Too lazy, maybe…”
Marie smirked and stuck out her tongue. Bruja plopped in front of Thunderbird and Dragon as they powered up between the sofa and the bookshelves—her favorite spot. Marie gawked. “Are those winged heaps of junk robotic lights?”
“Circus-bots,” Cinnamon sputtered. “Carnival took all their juice.”
Marie nodded. “Tin-can dragon and cellophane wonder-bird. Still putting on shows? I thought you were some big engineer.”
