This Is the Night (9 page)

6.

Benny’s problem was simple: he owed his dealer more money than he had, and his dealer was starting to get unhappy.

“That was bad money, Benny, and you know it.” They eyed each other across the small round table.

The Millhouse was divided by an invisible barrier: on one end, clean-shaven older men in shiny medallion shoes and ironed silk ties sat alongside young women in high-buttoned dresses and tasteful neckwear, all of them gulping down large cups of coffee before work and staring disdainfully at the other side, that section of the coffee shop that consisted of prickly, exhausted young men with ruddy smells bursting from their armpits, men with baggy eyes and last night’s clothes. This second group grasped their mugs for warmth and barely sipped from them, silently staring at one another—
Who are you? Why are you still here?
—no one acknowledging that they were all about to be snapped up or had to disappear, all of them sure that at least a few in the crowd, with the dirtiest being the most likely candidates, were probably Registry undercovers anyway. Whatever. Benny knew which side he was on. Sure he stank, but those clean men would be in his place any day now.

“You understand me, Benny? You understand that this is serious?” his dealer was saying. For health or fashion reasons, Benny was never sure, his dealer always wore a flowered lei around his neck. Now the wreath sagged flat on his dealer’s chest, the pinks, reds, and whites sick and wilted. “I’m not happy with you,” he said. “Not at all.”

“I understand,” Benny told him. From the side of his vision, he eyed a woman across the coffee shop with long legs and plump lips.

“This is bad, Benny. Really bad.” His words weren’t friendly, but Benny’s dealer had a talent for staying calm when he was deeply angry. Besides, he was right: Benny had spent twenty real Currencies in order to get the fake sixty.

“Well, give me the bad Currencies back,” Benny said. “And I’ll get you the real money.”

“I don’t like that you did that. It’s not a good-faith move by a customer. It doesn’t inspire confidence.” The dealer rocked back on the rear legs of his chair. A thin creak floated up between them, the sound, Benny knew, of his dealer’s false limb interacting with the hard floor. Benny had seen his dealer’s prosthetic on a humid day a few months back. The skin color of the substitute leg wasn’t even close, but then again, at least the dealer had one. With the nationwide shortage, few of the amputated had a good match.

“So we’re clear? We’re good?” said Benny. Was the plump-lipped woman from across the room winking at him?

“No, we’re not good. You paid me in crap. Sixty worthless Currencies.” The dealer closed his eyes for what seemed to Benny like too long a time, and then opened them again.

“Right,” Benny said. “So now that you’re awake, I’m going to need those fake Currencies back so I can get you your real sixty.” Benny didn’t have any other connections, and his dealer’s stuff truly was the best. The plump-lipped woman smiled at him yet again, but this time Benny ignored her, the realization of his dealer’s anger now occupying all of his attention. With the walls of his veins throbbing, he knew he would tell his dealer anything he wanted to hear.

“Maybe you don’t understand, you stupid mother-raper,” his dealer said, voice rising. “I’m keeping the fake stuff. But that bullshit money doesn’t settle your debt, not even close. So now”—he leaned forward, a vein about the width of the temple tip on a pair of spectacles bursting from his forehead—“you are, shall we say, obligated to get me my sixty real Currencies.”

Smile,
Benny thought.
Show him that whatever he wants is no problem.
A quick thought crossed Benny’s mind that he should Point Line his dealer, but he knew that all a pointing would do was save a few Currencies and leave him in the same spot: without his dealer’s stuff. Then he remembered that you can’t point a veteran. New tactic. Give the guy something to identify with. “I’m having problems with the Registry,” he told his dealer. “I’m up on First Tuesday.”

A smile followed a sneeze, the fringe on his dealer’s vest flying up and then back down again along with his high-pitched spasm. “You read
A Thousand and One
?”

Benny didn’t know if the conversation was turning in a way that was good for him or not. He shrugged.

“C’mon, Benny.
A Thousand and One Ways to Beat the Registry.
You want to end up with one of these?” He knocked on the knee of his plastic leg. “And that’s the least of my problems. The things I saw. So many—”

“So what’s this ‘thousand and one’?”

“It’s a book, Benny. And damn the Young Savior if you aren’t going to need it more than anyone.”

“How do I get it?”

“Well, that’s just it. You can’t just get it. Unlike almost every piece of information in this country, what with our ten thousand radio stations and two million newspapers or whatever, the stuff in this book is actually hard to find.”

“Okay,” Benny said.

“But luckily for you,” his dealer continued, “even though you are by far my shittiest customer, you are still a customer. You’re going to be in the hands of the Homeland anyway. I see that. So I’m cutting your bill in half, a debt to a future serviceman.”

“You don’t know that,” Benny said. “I could still run.”

The dealer brought the lei over his head and placed it on the table. It clumped in front of them like some bright piece of roadkill. “I feel like slapping you,” his dealer said. “You don’t just run. Whole underground organizations are out there, and they’ve given this a lot more thought than you have. Maybe someone might have been able to just up and run in year twelve, even year fifteen, but now? There’s a whole industry for runners out there, if you can find them. Of course, that’s the whole point. They don’t want you to find them. But if you can, you’ve got your baldheads; they have this game where they scream at each other—I’m not quite sure how that gets people out of service, but they say it does; you’ve got the Homeland Indigenous Movement, not that they would help you out. The point is, you’ve got to plan to run, to join up with people. Running isn’t just running. Running is planning.” He paused and grinned to himself. “Running.” He laughed. “They’ll run you right down.”

“Allied Country N is just a two-day bus ride.”

“Right. You got a lot of places to crash in N? Do you even have a real winter coat? You think that flimsy jacket you got on will work up there?”

“I’m a friendly guy.” Benny rubbed the fabric of his coat between his thumb and forefinger. “I could get those things.” His dealer was right, though. It was a thin coat.

“How about you read the paper for once, listen to the news or something? Did you know that up by the border, no one is fixing the roads? That half the cars are wrecked from minicraters, that buses can barely pass? Or how about the rule changes? That you’ve got to show employment before they let you in now? Did you know that, Benny?”

“Sure, I know a lot of things.”

“I highly doubt that. You can’t even fake sixty Currencies right.”

“I could get it right if you’d give them back to me.”

“Shut up, Benny.” The dealer sniffed loudly and closed his eyes again. Maybe the guy was allergic to his own lei. “I’m going to do you a favor,” the dealer said. “Bring the Currencies—real ones—to this address. Just half, that’s the first part of the favor.”

“What’s the other part?”

“Damn the Young Savior, you’re a greedy bastard. These guys you’re bringing half the money you owe me to, they have a copy of
A Thousand and One
. Tell them you know me and that your induction is just a few days from now
.
”

Through the window, Benny spotted Joe and did a funny jump to his feet that twisted his back. “Don’t talk to me for a minute,” he told his dealer. “I’ve got to handle some stuff.” Benny walked to the counter and leaned forward, squinting at the sour baked goods he did not have enough Currencies to buy. Anything to make it seem as though he had come alone.

“Get that money to that address and we won’t ever talk again,” said the dealer to his back.

“Why would you say that?” Benny asked, turning around to face him. His dealer really did have the best stuff.

“You’re an idiot, Benny. Either you’re going to be blasting little Foreign babies’ heads off, fighting the good fight against Ideology Five, or you’re going to be moving around every three days and looking over your shoulder. You’re not going to be here, hanging out. Do you understand that? Look around.” His hands slashed the air, palms up. “This is done. Over.”

“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.”