Angels and Electrons: A Sub-Suburb Tale

by Paul Hawkins

  Chapter 6: Escape from the Sub-Suburbs

  From Blaise’s Journal

  Now over ten years have passed and life is creeping back into the sticks at last but in a different way than the eighties oil boom prosperity once foretold. That boom, when it seemed boundless, promised something like a stampede into the sticks, something like the original land run that colonized the state. If the land run were held today it would be populated by the kind of fat women in stretch pants you see beating their kids in Wal-Mart and by the kind of skinny, hollow-eyed men who spend their kids' lunch money at the track or on the state lottery. And by the rich - nobody gets their rocks off getting something for nothing like the rich. One time the restaurant I worked for hosted a catered affair for suburban junior league do-gooders and I swear a woman richer than Midas went into uncontrollable paroxysms of bliss simply for winning a cake.

  From Rosalind’s Journal: At the Bait Store

  They scheduled the intervention for Blaise at the bait shop. Ray Jr. runs the bait shop and he told me what went on. Ray Sr, his father, has no education but has been a shrewd businessman. His rare car parts industry has thrived, particularly with the advent of the internet. He is the major rare car parts dealer for the Southwest. His nephew Dale Charboneau runs the adjacent Sinclair filling station now.

  At about ten in the morning Janet arrived, first of the group, stepping through the bell-clanging bait shop door in a businesswoman’s suit. Ray Jr. whistled low but when he found out who she was he offered her a soda pop, on the house. She took it and retreated quietly to the table in the corner. She had a briefcase that looked heavy.

  Tess arrived next. If Ray whistled low at Janet his jaw dropped at Tess. She had blossomed into a big, bosomy, Maye West "come up and see me some time" type of gal with acres of tattoos, henna red hair, dark lipstick, green eye shadow, and a phony beauty mark. These days she worked in California on a rescue farm for abused Hollywood stunt animals and the abandoned exotic pets of the rich and stupid. It was owned by a once-famous leading lady who had found a higher calling about the same time the studios decided they just couldn't cast her anymore. Tess had come across the job while working as a roadie for a faded metal star who did not know what to do with the pet hyena he had purchased on a six-month bender. Aside from her zoo career she also worked for the metal head's wife as a personal shopper and girl-friday because she was trustworthy and she double-checked the books every day to make sure the band’s manager wasn’t skimming money.

  Next came Jude. Janet scowled at him and wished he would hold himself up straight when he walked. But he looked like he was trying to get his act together – he wore a suit and carried a briefcase that they later found out had nothing in it. He nodded to them both and sat across the table from Tess. She smiled at him pleasantly when she saw him gawking at the painted dragons on her forearms.

  "Chinese - good luck. Wanna touch one?"

  Jude laughed nervously and for too long. Tess rolled her eyes and Ray Jr. saw this and laughed and Tess hung a wandering gaze back at Ray Jr., who crossed his arms and pushed his fists up under his biceps to make them look bigger. Their eyes met and suddenly foretold a hookup later that night.

  The threesome at the table exchanged pleasantries. Janet asked Jude about his plans, knowing full well she had pulled more than a few strings to get him a steady but low-paying job managing legal affairs for the state department of bees. Jude rambled about how much he enjoyed the job and then he slipped up and mentioned how Blaise had told him that someday in the future, bees might be used to deliver messages via microcircuitry should the etherverse collapse.

  “They can orient themselves via the sun, Blaise said. Even if the world goes to hell, as long as the sun stays in the same place it would work. Bees and microspheres of data no bigger than grains of pollen, sticking to and brushing off their legs at stations set up between towns. Passager pigeons of the post-apocalypse."

  Jude's face glowed at the idea at first, but Janet put it to him bluntly. "Grow up. Where is Blaise anyway? He said he’d be here.”

  Just then Blaise strode in through the screen door. He was still big and bear-like after all these years. Tess sprang up and wrapped him in a hug. When she let him go she was crying. Janet remained seated so he just nodded to her and then pulled up a chair with a loud scooting noise.

  “Pleasantries all,” he said.

  “You’re looking well,” Janet told him.

  “Thank you. I am trying to stay well, and stay clean.”

  “Good for you!” Tess said. “I think you’re going to love it in the Philippines! Solitude, natural beauty, ocean breezes. Pretty senoritas.”

  “Yes,” Blaise said. “I’m ready for that. More than ready.” He looked down at his hands. "Look, I heard what you were talking about when I first came in. I should warn you, however, that what Jude was describing is nowhere near as wild as it seems. The apocalypse will come. Why, while I was in prison, I figured out a way to take the whole grid down."

  "Blaise…"

  But his eyes were widening. "This whole internet - this network of networks that we trust to define everything about who we are. It's so stupid the way they've designed it. All linked together - banks and governments and everyone's private accounts. It's all so stupid. One small virus and it all goes down."

  Janet glared at him. "You shouldn't think about that, Blaise."

  But he went on. "I could take it down with one electron. Think about it - just one wave/particle unleashed spinning the proper way and all the bank accounts vanish, all records of who owes what and who owns what dissolve, trillions of dollars of debt and assets evaporate like and the world's in chaos. One zero or a thousand after a digit doesn't matter anymore - it was all fiction, and the world is ready to be remade. Only the man in sackcloth knows what's his.”

  Janet looked at him. "You do realize that I was given power of attorney upon your release. They made me responsible for protecting the world from you, and for protecting you from yourself."

  "She mean she holds the keys to your cell in the looney bin," Ray Jr. interjected.

  "Ray pretty much summed it up," Jude said. "Look Blaise, stick with our plan. Go to the Philippines. Live a simple life. Find yourself and find purpose - live and work with real people. Otherwise you will always revisit the old temptations."

  "I think you're right."

  "And for God's sake, get on some pills."

  "The change of pace will be enough."

  "Not on my watch," Janet said. "I've got your pill prescriptions and your plane tickets right here, and you need to follow through with both. I have a nurse waiting for you on the other side."

  "Thank you," he said.

  "You're welcome," she said perfunctorily.

  "No Janet, I mean it."

  For one moment his eyes got past her guard, and she finally realized all it meant to be brother and sister, and to have their shared history and built-in commitment and care for each other.

  "Good God, Blaise," she said and brushed her eyes. "Of course you're welcome. You may have the brain of Dad but you look like Mother and you inherited some of her temperament. That's been your guardian angel. Your innate decency has protected you from yourself."

  Blaise cleared his throat. “Please do not take the phone call you’ll be receiving any second.”

  “Why’s that?” Janet said.

  “The Electron,” Blaise said. “I invented it last night. It’s in the wires.”

  “Good God,” Janet said.

  Just then they heard the bait shop phone ring and Ray Jr. answer, “Lakeside Bait-n-Tackle - Ray Jr. speaking. May I help you?”

  Janet gripped the sides of the table as if it were about to slip away, and Jude and Tess exchanged shocked glances, but then Blaise sat back and laughed.

  “Fooled you.”

  Janet fell back. Tess laughed like she would bust a gut. Ray Jr. looked confused but then admired her as she shook. They would hook up later that night.

&
nbsp; Blaise sat back in his chair.

  Janet glared. “That was not funny.”

  Blaise just looked at his feet and smiled. “Well how about this: Jude, did you tell Janet how Dale Charboneau has tracked down you and Janet’s love child?”

  Jude and Janet looked at each other. Blaise sipped at his pop until it made that bottom-of-the-bottle noise, and Dale cleared his throat. Janet sat up and clasped her purse and Jude suddenly became engrossed in a study of his folded hands upon the table.

  “A twenty-year excursion into the past awaits.” Blaise said.

  “Indeed,” Dale Charboneau said, “Now look - I’ve scouted out the lay of the land. Here’s a map. He’s living with a cult…”

  “Good God,” Janet said. “If he really wants to see us.”

  “What do you say?” Jude asked Janet tremulously.

  “Say so-long to your fiancé,” Blaise said.

  “It won’t be the first one.”

  Janet only sat back, trying to get past the feeling of not being in control.

  Jude sat up straight and felt his mind discard the darkest episodes of his past the way a man might let loose sooty bird rescued from a chimney.

  From Blaise’s Journal

  The next few weeks moved quickly. Janet closed the deals for my acres and the lot that had been Boheme. I had found fifteen mason jars of silver dollars there, and many objet d’art. Well, Bess did. God bless Bess. She was a good friend, but she died during my second prison stint. I have sent the silver dollars on ahead of me in a box marked as “books.” No one wants to open books.

  Bess also found some holy relics which I gave to the diocese. They will go in the church - St. Raphael’s. I donate the land, I choose the name.

  Jude and Janet have gone to meet their long lost son. He was acolytes of Emerson, vegetables, and yoga. He has some of Jude in him so he hasn’t lived up to the potential of all his pent-up rage. He’s saved it up for them - it’s something a scholarship to Brown won’t exorcise. I have paid for the three of them to backpack across Europe together. Between the trains and the hostels they will get to know each other. And Jude will eventually win over Janet if he gets some gumption.

  *

  I have moved to the Philippines.

  I have moved to the Philippines and am with my friend from high school who joined the navy then decided to live here. He got me a place to stay. He is a jolly soul, more coarse than I remembered, or I am softer. But he is fun. During the first few weeks after my arrival he has tried to fix me up with at least a dozen girls, but none has been right. And he likes living in the city and I do not.