The Extra, page 5
A-Rab sold all his pieces for later delivery. What little was left of Metro patrols in the Zoo gave most of their attention to gun trafficking. No one, especially A-rab, wanted a flow of happy new gun owners circulating in his immediate neighborhood. He said he would give her thirty clacks for each piece delivered, and the more she carried per trip, the better. Jool had a gutsy scooter with a stout tail-box, so she’d said yes, and headed down to Culver City to pick up her first run one midmorning in summer.
Her way lay through a zone she liked, northern C.C. around the old MGM studios between Culver and Washington Boulevards. There’d been a lot of destruction there in the first years of Metro downsizing, the patrol fleet down to 15 percent within the decade. Gang wars had raged around the studio, its useful soundstages and set hangars. Fire had razed a thousand acres of old suburbs south of Culver.
In the twenty years since, bougainvillea and passion flower vine had clothed this mile of charred hulks. Everything was waist-deep in grass, and all the trees, untopped for a generation, towered, their leaves rippled in the breeze. She sometimes came down here to stroll around this place she called the Woodlands. In the summer the bougainvillea was beautiful, like lush pink and lavender leopard skin draping the burned stud bones, morning glory running in rivulets of sky-blue around chimneys, along fences, ice plant’s succulent spikes overflowing like green barnacles—and once as she sat in the grass savoring all this, she turned and saw a young coyote, his rufous throat fur and silver back taking the sun, standing in the grass watching her shyly. Seeming to give her a little nod of greeting, he’d trotted off down the cracked and weed-tufted asphalt.
On the way to that first run for A-Rab, Jool drove through here, and had the idle thought that some of these hulks, looking as demolished as they did, might have unscavanged basements. It was a notion that was shortly to save her ass. Coming back from A-Rab’s with six handguns in her tail-box and a thin layer of books he’d thrown on top for cover, she was carrying her delivery addresses and her cash on her person. Then, just ahead, Metro flashed past on Culver, and she spooked.
Veering sharply off into the Woodlands lanes, she pulled her scooter up off the curb, and climbed up to the nearest green-furred hulk, trying to look like a scavenger, just in case they whipped back this way . . . and saw, under the collapsed studs and sheeting, an empty space. Tugging up the charred lumber and breaking the weeds’ grip, Jool found a basement workshop, practically untouched. A bench, shelves of hand tools—and a big shelf of books.
And, when she came up, charcoal-smeared, with her first armload of books, there was the Metro, bigger than shit, pulled right up beside her scooter. They gave her the bug-eyes, flipped a bitch, and sped away.
A dozen visits, and she’d mined all the tools, and thirty cubic feet of books. Thereafter, she went to A-Rab’s with a full load of books. She would sell him just a few, and ride back out with fifteen handguns under a large, convincing load of reads, and have besides a convincing cover for visiting the flea market so often. Jool sold the tools and bought another forty cubic feet of books from all the cheap wholesalers her momma was friends with.
She stayed with the gunrunning almost two years because the money really made the homestead secure, and paid for the state-of-the-art chain-link and razor-wire perimeter, their nice new water tank, and a new, efficient generator.
She checked out the rest of the Woodlands too, finding other basements, tools, and more books. And would sometimes steal a few hours relaxing there, watching fox kits playing, a red-tail nail a rabbit, the waterbirds wheel above La Ballona Creek. On these dangerous gains of hers, she and Momma were making do quite well, but her first real thoughts of escaping the Zoo had come to her there on those Woodlands afternoons—dreams of living somewhere where there were deer on the hillsides. . . .
She’d been just a book dealer now, these last three years. Seemed she’d settled in, buying Momma bigger and more solid furniture to give her comfort as she grew slower and achier with chronic fear and despair. Jool had had an older sister she didn’t remember, Kamesha, who was gunned down back in their old neighborhood, along with their daddy, whom she didn’t remember either. . . .
So much done, and the work here still not finished. It scared her to remember all the close calls she’d had, just getting by down here. When you’ve used up so much luck, you worry if you have enough left for tomorrow. But no way out of it, all this carefully constructed security around her, all to be left unfinished, whether she came back rich, or didn’t come back at all. Because look at her now. Actually going to step out. Panoply tomorrow, and the next day, if she lived, the world.
She thought of that ’Rise-ass boy today, that Curtis. He’d launched her on all this, had been that little touch of bad luck that changes everything. Out of nowhere. The boy had liked her, was kinda cute too. If it hadn’t all blown up, he would have come back, looking for more books . . . and for her. Funny boy. Had some nerve on him, for a ’Rise-ass. Chops would’ve liked him, a serious, sweet boy like that. . . .
You couldn’t hold on to anything. Shit dropped on you, and you just had to hit the ground running and pray for a way out. That would be tomorrow—hit the ground running. It would hurt, but she was gonna hide her piece, with the help of plenty of grease, and hope to make it past the detectors, then pray she could get it out before she had to start running. Even a little gat like that would seriously cramp her sprint if she couldn’t. Hit the ground, girl . . . all you can do. She saw herself running down the streets of an endless set, saw herself dodging, though she couldn’t see what it was she dodged. . . .
She was asleep. Chops patrolled by her every ten minutes to check on her. Toward dawn he noticed that she must be dreaming—her legs were giving little twitches. He understood. Dreaming of running.
“Curtis. What are you lookin’ at? You been starin’ out that window a solid hour! It’s midnight, boy!”
“What if it is, you crusty old shrew?” I got up to kiss her. My auntie Drew had shuffled out in her slippers and robe. She wore her hair in a shiny processed conk that she dyed snow-white. That was just like her. No way she was going to pretend she wasn’t getting old. First signs of gray, bam, she went solid white, and proud of it, thank you. With her sharp eyes and her shrewd little chocolate face, she looked like what she was: one bad-ass little lady.
She liked me to call her names, to spar with her. My auntie was kindness right to the bone, but the only way she could handle it was to bark and snap. She’d never let me call her Momma, though I kept doing it when I was little. When she figured I was old enough to understand, she sat me down about it.
“I’m not your momma, Curtis. I’m your momma Lee’s big sister, and you save that Momma for her if you ever meet her, ’cause she’s not dead, boy. She just . . . left you, Curtis. She was sorry about it, real sorry, but she was always an adventurer, not a work horse like me. She could never settle in after your daddy got killed, sat staring out my window for the longest time, thinking about where else she might go. She knew I liked you just fine and I would be glad to have you with me right up to the day I died. I wanted your company, you little devil—so that I’d never get lonely, long as I had you with me.”
I’d never needed her to come out and say she loved me—I’d always known it. “I’m gonna make you some of your tea, Auntie. You sit right here.”
But she stood behind me, looking out with me. “That used to be all lights. Just a sea of them. I ever show you where I went to work, just out of college?”
“You know you have.” I smiled. “Right down over there. Hamilton High where you saved up the down on this place.”
“You had to move up here, into one of these”—gesturing at the other ’Rises around us—“It was just getting too rough down there, but Curtis, I’ve always missed it. The trees. The crazy sidewalks buckled by their roots. Walking down them under the sky. Even the traffic was pretty at night. All those headlights and taillights an’ signals rippling colors. But they designed it, you see, pulling all jobs in here, in the ’Rises. And now . . . well, I hear they’re still teaching classes over at my old school. Private contractors, couple dozen or so doing the best they can, using not even half the rooms, barely keeps the building maintained.”
“I know, Auntie. We were down on La Brea today, buying some books. There’s still good people down there . . . keeping things alive. Now sit here, witch-lady an’ I’ll make you some tea. It’s got the good vitamins in it.”
I spied on her from the kitchen while I made it—and caught her at just what I was watching for, those little movements of her shoulders that told me she was rubbing her hands together, working in that arthritis cream of hers with the steroids in it. When she’d realized I could smell it, she’d started paying extra for an odorless mixture . . . but how could she hide anything from me?
She was a keyboard demon—had a brain like a calculator for figures, and hands that could almost keep up with it, but she was losing those hands fast. Casualty Credit, which also held the note on our home here, gave her Gold Star Employee Status for the load she pulled, with a .5 percent break on the interest on her loan. Last year she’d reached the equity level for a straight trade to a paid-off place in from the rim. Not good enough. She was going to own her place, with windows. Whenever she had some free time she’d sit by them and read. Read, and look up from the pages every now and then, out at the world, where there was room to spread out the imagination her book was feeding. . . .
It almost brought tears to my eyes, seeing her there secretly massaging her hands. I’d tried to make her give me some of her load, had done a couple hours after she knocked off tonight, as I always did, and was OK at it, but compared to her, I was slow as molasses. She knew she had to get this place paid off for me—I’d never make it on the board myself.
I’d argued with her about taking me on as a full-time helper. “Full time, I could cut your load by a quarter anyway.”
This would always get her going. “I don’t want you workin’ for ’em! I want you to develop something of your own, Curtis, merchanting. I like that book cart of yours. Why don’t you boys push it into something big enough to live on? If you work directly for the Corps, they lock you in. They start you in debt, and keep you there. Let me pay off the windows.”
That’s what she called our condo, the windows. I imagined my mother staring out of them years ago, me a toddler nearby, Auntie Drew watching both of us. Maybe Auntie had flashed on the same picture, seeing me sitting there just now. My momma Lee, an adventurer. That was my whole inheritance from her, it seemed. Just that word. That idea.
When I brought Auntie her tea, it was like two people were doing it, me and this Curtis dude, me watching him putting the cup in her hands, in her fingers that already looked a little twisted. And I was thinking: Look at this guy, putting tea in those hands of hers that she’s twisted up working to buy him a house! What a useless asshole!
We looked out over the Zoo, so darkened from its days of glory, which the vids still remembered—a pavement of stars, a bed of white embers and gems, threaded with the freeways’ corpuscular rivers, their murmur like a great beast purring.
Once the Corps got full globalization, had bought all the governments and staffed them with Corps, what had to happen? So many poor in the world, all wages sank. That Zoo was a Malthus zone now. It had to be a place where many died every day, just like the Ag-worker Zone, miles and miles of it to the east and south. Because to run the world smoothly, the Corps only needed enough people to buy their products, and enough of the desperate to fill their hard and high-risk jobs. Just enough to nourish a seed crop of the poor.
My auntie got up to go back to bed. After he hugged her and kissed her, I watched this useless Curtis dude smile, and I heard him say, “I’m goin’ out early tomorrow, Auntie, and try to scare up some work. I’ll get my breakfast out.” His voice sounded wrong, the guy screwed it up, because Auntie gave him a sharp, almost a scared look.
“What’re you talkin’ about, Curtis? How early?”
“Early enough to beat the crowds on the ramps. I need to move my limbs, run a little, Auntie. Fact, maybe you want to come with me—we’ll go slow, get you up a nice power-walking sweat before you sit down to the board.”
Best to put her on the defensive, distract her. But she said, “Well, I’m sorry, but I got real work to do, and I wanna see you here when I sit down to the board, you hear me? You can give me a hand tomorrow. I got some . . . spreads you can help me with. Eight sharp, you understand?” She sensed something, no doubt about it.
“OK, eight sharp. I’ll be here. You just take your tea here to bed now—please? We both gotta get some z’s.”
She looked back at me from the door of her room, something I couldn’t quite read in her eyes. Her white hair made her eyes dark as night to me. Quietly, at last, she said, “You a good boy, Curtis,” and went inside.
Both of us sat down by the window alone again—me and this new, somewhere-outside-himself Curtis, the Curtis who was going out there as soon as Auntie was asleep, and hoofing it down to Tube Nine. Was I really going out there with this guy?
I nearly puked with fear when I had to admit that I was.
Then I was just me, one scared ’Rise-ass who’d stepped out of his ’Rise and fallen down into a whole new world—that one out there.
My eye picked out something blue—beyond the freeway, floating just above the flatland of the Zoo, above the faint freckling of weak streetlights and spiky shadows of powerpoles, trees, billboards: a little luminous blue rectangle. I’d been brooding on it when Auntie came out. Had she noticed what I was looking at? You couldn’t read it from here, but maybe she knew what an extra notice looked like.
I stayed there at the window, like a guy shaking at the bars of his cage I guess, asking myself if there was no other way to make money . . . and I knew there wasn’t.
Shit. She’d be alone the rest of her life if I didn’t come back . . . and her hands would shrink into knots if I let this go on.
But even if I came back alive, loaded with clacks, where exactly would we be going? The Trinities. The Sierra foothills. The Land of Oz! What if these mountain communities were just fictions? You drove in, met with the Town Council, and found a bunch of crackers with shotguns who took your cash and buried you in the hills?
I couldn’t believe it. I wouldn’t believe it. A big chunk of the best produce and meat that fed L.A. was trucked into the Zoo wholesalers and processors from the mountains to augment their own Basin-grown goods. The best tomatoes, the best canteloupes—my own personal favorite—were stickered Moonrise, from the Trinities. And Wolverton, in the Sierras, ran a damn good reprints press. All my Shakespeare, my Dickens, my whole collection of Raymond Chandler were Wolverton Offset Books—scarcely a misprint in any of them! No, there were real people up in them there hills, running real communities.
The bottom line was, if there was even a chance of something better, we had to take it. Because not to take it was to surrender, and live the rest of our crowded lives without self-respect.
After a bit, I peeked in Auntie’s room, and saw her asleep. At her workstation I left her a note—not a lie: Sorry,Auntie. I found some work. I’ll see you later. At least I hoped that last sentence wasn’t a lie. Then I slipped out our door, and headed for the street.
THE TUBE
Tube Nine. The gangways converging from the streets were jammed, the vast platform packed right up to the fence erected for this extra call. I’d come straight from the ’Rise six hours early and gotten this frontline spot, but was wedged in tight within minutes of arrival. I stuck my hands in my pockets so no one else would. I dozed standing up, supported by the fence and the crowd, and woke to a lively roar. The multitude seethed. It must be getting close to loading time.
Forget finding Japh. Anyway, the word was that they filtered people apart as they came on-set to separate anyone who arrived buddied up. When the shoot started they wanted friends scrambling to find each other, to give things that realistic air of catastrophe, people searching, calling out names.
The people packed in this chute couldn’t turn easily to face each other, so they just shouted out what they had to say, everyone trading rumors.
“They say the APPs are giant dogs, bigger’n people. That true? Anyone hear that?”
“Fuck no! These APPs half rat an’ half bug. Big ol’ bug jaws on ’em. Bug-rats, Fool! Everyone knows that!”
“Fool you! My man works at Pimply, crotch-weed. APPs’re reptiles wit’ poison tongues whip out an’ stab right through you. Poison melts you an’ then they lick you up!”
“Hey, what kinda detectors Pimply got? They go off on tempered plastic an’ shit?”
“They got staydadeart scans, whaddaya, simple? They go off you even thinkin’ ’bout sneakin’ a blade in!”
“Hey, whaddabout Kevlar undies?”
There was a lot of laughing going on, the crowing kind, people showing off that they could laugh. Just then, somewhere in the crowd behind me, a shrill voice said “ ’Rise-ass!” There was a hubub of voices, and then a defiant “Fuck you” in a voice I could have sworn was Japh’s! Could I be so lucky? It seemed an omen of survival if I was.
We were all crammed way too tight for any serious fighting to break out, but if that was Japh I wanted him to know he had backup, know I was here. At the top of my lungs I roared:
“ ’RISE-ASS RULES!”
Boy, did that raise a storm around me: “Who said that where he at you looking to die ’fore you even get to the set hey we gotta ’Rise-ass here your candy-ass is mine I got him first who said that where he at?” No one could even turn around but everyone was trying at once and it felt like being inside a huge snake trying to digest you. That was good. The upheaval snuffed itself right out, everyone equally hurt by it.
