Like a Boss (35 page)

My hand shook as I stared at the lines. “She texted me the next day to ask how the party went. She’d assumed I had bought all this rum for some kind of bash, and I was too embarrassed to make up a story. I told her about getting ripped off, and then she acted embarrassed, like she’d overstepped some boundary I didn’t know about.”

“I hid the case with a neighbor I trusted, but she got ripped off, too. Now I was broke, and all I had was the bottle I kept with me at all times. Even if I’d had the money, I couldn’t go back and buy another case. How would that have looked? I know it looked bad enough that I always had this bottle of rum with me.”

I took a deep breath. “I need to take a drink every night, Vikram. Something happened to my brain when I was in transit. The hibernant damaged my posterior cortex, and if I don’t take a sip every night at six o’clock, then I will begin to go crazy. And I don’t mean the way that a real rummy gets the shakes. I mean that…”

My left hand hovered over my skull, my fingers wavering. The Fear let out a guttural shriek:
He won’t believe you
.

I looked at the form and remembered what it felt like to read the deed two years ago.
Banks believed me
. I swallowed and looked Vikram right in the eye.

“I call it The Fear. First it eats away at my confidence. Then it takes away my cognitive abilities. I forget how to draw a number three or what color the sky is. There’s no real treatment here, not when there are so many other mentally ill people who
really
need the few meds we get. So, a doctor said that I should light a candle, think about my place in the universe, and sip a finger of Old Windswept. It’s kept me sane for the last sixteen years, and I never told Estella Tonggow that it was the only reason I wanted to buy her distillery. I should have been honest with her, Vikram. She wouldn’t have said boo. That woman had smarts and class and compassion, and she got killed because of me. That Ghost Squad? One of them killed her just to get to me.

“And now Letty’s going to try and do the same thing. When she finds out I’m alive, she’s going to do everything she can to slander me, to make me look like a basket case, even though
she’s
the one who shot two women right in front of me. God knows what else she’s done, but she’s not going to get one over on me again. She won’t be able to. I need that distillery, but it’s not worth it if this whole planet burns just ’cause I’m too chickenshit to stop her.”

I signed all six lines. Vikram blinked at each one, then handed them back to me. “You might want to make copies for yourself.”

I pointed at my right eye. “My pai’s a little busted. What now?”

Vikram scooped up the papers and put them inside his jacket. “Now, I’m going to help you make a metric fuckton of money. You ready?”

I smiled. “I like the cut of your jib, mister. Let’s go.”

Vikram and I had gotten to the lobby when he stopped and blinked. “Holy cow,” he said. “My pai just came on.”

“Big surprise. Letty’s probably watching all of, ah, OW…”

My right eye burned as hot orange text scrolled past. I clamped both hands over my eye, but the letters and the fire continued. Any screams I might have had were caught in my throat as the text turned into error messages. Angry error messages. The kind that transformed into lightning bolts that ran from my pai straight into my brain. And I couldn’t turn them off.

I might have heard Vikram calling my name. I know I felt someone try to pull my hands off my face, but I sent my elbows flying. Moving my hands would mean taking away the pressure that was keeping my eyeball from exploding. It also meant that I couldn’t escape the onslaught of messages until they suddenly stopped on their own. I caught my breath. The burning had stopped, too.

After a moment, I looked at Vikram. He rubbed his thigh. “That hurt.”

“Sorry,” I said, my heart still pounding. “Did you get a bunch of errors?”

He shook his head. “You okay?”

“No, but I’ll have to deal with it later.” I lifted my hands from my eye. It didn’t blow up, which was nice. It still hurt like hell. I opened my eye, and Vikram made a face. “Looks a little bloodshot, but not too bad,” he said. “Can you see me?”

I nodded, then tried blinking. Another jolt, followed by more errors. “Guess mine isn’t back online. Can you make a recording for me?”

“Of course.” He squared his eyes at me but didn’t blink. “You want to clean up or anything?”

I looked at my ragged clothes, touched the streaks of dirt on my face. “No,” I said. “I want everyone to see me as I am. Hit it.”

He blinked and pointed at me:
You’re on
.

I took a breath and smiled. “Hi. Believe it or not, I’m Padma Mehta, and I’ve had a really, really weird forty-eight hours. We can talk about that later, because I want everyone to know now that I’m putting the Old Windswept Distillery up for sale. You can find the particulars on the Public, along with the terms of the sale. If you’ve ever wanted to roll with the swells in Chino Cove, now’s your opportunity. My share price is firm, so don’t bother to negotiate.”

I was about to say,
I can’t get your messages anyway
, when, for once, my brain’s better judgment kicked in. Letty may have had a backdoor into my pai, but she might not know that it wasn’t working properly. “Seeing how everyone’s pai access has been spotty, the best way to reach me will be through any Public terminals that are still operating. I’m in Xochimilco Grove, and I’ll be making my way to Brushhead. I hope that some of you have heard or seen the presentation I made this morning in Bakaara Market. If you haven’t, start asking around.” I leaned toward Vikram and smiled. “It’s the one where I accuse Leticia Arbusto Smythe of engineering the strike to cover up her malfeasance. Oh, and she murdered two people in front of me before she tried to burn me alive. So, you know, I wouldn’t really put a lot of stock in what she has to say.”

I nodded at Vikram, and he stopped recording. “How long until the shares start moving?”

“No idea,” he said. “It’ll have to filter out across the Public, and that could take–”

He flinched and blanched. “What is it?” I said.

“They’re gone. All sold.” He laughed. “I think you should check your bank account, Padma. You’ve just become insanely rich.”

We left the Co-Op Building for the nearest Public terminal. It stood on the corner of Chung Kuong Street and Singa-Laut Boulevard, covered in tags. Someone had lit a trash fire next to it, and soot filmed the screen. I wiped it clean and logged in. The number that popped out of my bank account made my heart skip a few beats. I had never seen that many commas in a number that belonged to me. Three million forty-six yuan. Tonggow’s asking price had been a whole lot less. My guts twisted. She had built that distillery from nothing, and she was going to hand it to me for a song. I wondered what she would have thought about all this. Maybe she would still appreciate the romance of it, though damned if I could find any right now.

“Is there any way to know who the buyers are?”

Vikram shook his head. “One of the perks of being a member of the Co-Op is that you don’t have to tell anyone outside of it who’s in.”

I narrowed my eyes. “So I’m really out? No longer a part of the Co-Op?”

He shook his head again, and his eyes were actually sad. “You don’t have a distillery anymore, Padma. I wish you still did, ’cause getting all these new buyers involved is going to be a massive pain in my ass.”

“Well, like they say, when one door closes, an entire house falls on you.”

“Are you really going to start spreading that money around?”

“Looks like I have to now.”

“Any way I can help?”

I thought for a moment. “Tell everyone you see that I’m making payroll.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Everyone?”

“Well, everyone you think
needs
the cash. If you run into anyone from the Executive Committee, for instance, feel free to tell them to go to hell.”

He gave me a nod and made his way up Singa-Luat.

I pulled up Public profiles of people who could get things running again. The city had to be fed, cane had to get pushed up the cable, and everyone probably needed a doctor. The closest address was a family of longshore crew two blocks over. It wasn’t just any family: the Shavelsons were three generations of Union stalwarts living under one roof. They were the kind of people who showed up to every committee meeting and complained, even for meetings outside of their Ward. Ethylene Shavelson, the matriarch, would spend her allotted two minutes of public speaking to denounce me, the Big Three, the Union, and anyone who was on her ever-growing list of People Who Had Done Her Wrong.

The Shavelsons’ house was four stories tall and looked like it had attacked and grafted other houses on to it. Ethylene had buried four husbands, and each one had added a few kids to the brood. Some of them moved out, but most stayed under the ever-expanding family roof. Each Shavelson kid who brought home a spouse added on to the house by cannibalizing bits from other neighborhoods. There were pieces from the striver rowhouses on Cheswell, panels from cargo can hutongs, even some black glass roof tiles from the Union office at Beukes Point.

I banged on the door, and got a gruff “Fuck off” from inside.

“I’m here with payroll,” I yelled.

There was a pause. “Bullshit,” came the reply.

“There are sixteen of you in here who haven’t gotten paid in weeks, and I am prepared to drop nineteen thousand yuan into your accounts. This offer expires in two minutes.”

The door swung open, and Ethylene Shavelson, all one and half meters of her, filled the doorway. The streetlights glinted off her face. She had decorated her tattoos with dots of reflective ink so her face looked like stars on black velvet. She had done the same with the tattoos on her massive arms. “That should be nineteen thousand
twenty
yuan,” she said, her voice sweet as honey. Behind her, in the shadows, I could see a few grandkids peeking out from the end of the hall.

“Really?” I said. “Well, it’s a good thing you’re on top of your family’s salaries, Ethylene.”

She sniffed and wiped her upper lip with her thumb. “What are
you
doing here? You’ve got nothing to do with payroll or cargo.”

“It’s a new day, Ethylene, and I am putting myself in charge of both. I want you and your family to get back to work.”

She squinted up at me before bursting into laughter. “Oh, that is funnier than the time you tried to punch Diesel at the Union Hall.”

“She was prying the ornaments off the clock face,” I said.

Ethylene shrugged. “She wanted to make a mobile for her baby. Do you not like kids?”

“I love kids. I just don’t like it when their mommies vandalize an important piece of neighborhood art ’cause everyone’s too afraid to call them on their shit.”

Ethylene tightened her smile into a smirk. “You come here to sour talk my daughter?”

“I came here to get your family and your entire crew to work sending cargo up the cable. That’s forty-five seconds. You want to get paid, or you want to hide in your castle for another week?”

She rolled her eyes. “We’ve been through strikes before.”

“They had a
point
. This one doesn’t. Or are you going to tell me otherwise?”

Ethylene leaned against the doorjamb and sucked on her teeth. “I’m going along with everyone else. I hear there’s a strike, I go on strike.”

“I admire your sense of solidarity. Can you eat it for dinner?”

“We got plenty stashed.”

“I’m sure. What about your crew? Have you checked on them?”

Her smirk crinkled. “Some of them aren’t doing so hot, no. Georgiou Little, he’s out of insulin. Lucy Cousins, her little girl’s inhalers are out.”

“Then help me help them by getting back to work. Make the call. I’m good for the cash.”

“We’ll get paid when the strike’s over.”

“Then you can send my condolences to Georgiou and Lucy. ’Cause the strike isn’t going to end, Ethylene. Letty’s going to drag it out as long as possible because it’s the only way she can get the Union to cover its debts. If people are dead, they don’t draw payroll. If their families are dead, they don’t draw benefits.”

“That is highly nihilistic.”

“And it’s the truth.”

She shook her head. “You got video to back that up?”

“We’re not talking about that. We’re talking about you getting back to work. And my two minutes are almost up.”

“Send me a peek at your bank account.”

I shook my head. “You want to get paid, you come with me to the Public terminal on Oshkosh and Bloor.”

“You don’t trust me?”

“I want people to
see
you with me. I’m good for the money. You good with letting Georgiou go into a diabetic coma?”

“I want to know what your game is.”

“There is no game, Ethylene.” I stepped back from her front stoop. “There’s just people who work because we don’t live in a future where we’ve become beings of pure thought who subsist on light. We live in the future where we’ve got to work to put food on the table to keep from starving. We chose to Breach and join the Union, and that means a lifetime of looking out for each other, even if we don’t
like
each other. Letty may have failed you, but I won’t. Twenty seconds, and I’m walking over to Jack Lopez’s house. You know he’ll take my offer, and
he’ll
be the one convinces everyone else to go back to work ’cause people listen to him.”

She bristled. “They’ll listen to me more.”

“Then walk with me to Bloor.”

“Gran?” One of the kids appeared behind Ethylene. He struggled to hold up a kit bag bigger than his torso. “You going back to work? You need your gear?”

“Oy, Markel! Didn’t I tell you to stay away from that?”

The boy beamed at her. “I like to help.”

“Then you can help by doing what I say when I say it. Gimme that.”

Ethylene took the bag just as the kid was about to fall over from the weight. She tossed the bag over one shoulder and scooped Markel into a hug. “You run back inside. I need to finish talking with this lady.”

He nodded at her and gave me the eyeball. “You here to exploit my Gran?”