Chimpanzee (2 page)

Sometimes it gets leaked to gangs or cartels or separatists. The ones the Committee finds useful, who'll do something about something.

It's important that Renewal dispatchers randomize their monitors. Different people see different things. Some see inequality. Some see waste. Some don't see anything at all. They're all the same, and it's all about perceptual readiness and environmental priming.

I should know. I studied all of this in graduate school. Perception isn't about receiving information. It's about creating it. The world in your own image.

The yearly audits are important because educations are not repossessed wholesale—repossession therapists go after aspects of your education one at a time, starting with the most recent, in the hopes that you'll get a job and start repaying the loans before they have to repossess your entire education, which is your means of earning to pay anything back.

With everyone gone bankrupt, though, it no longer matters. There aren't many still borrowing their ways through college.

After 365 consistent days without a job, I have exceeded the allowable forbearance on my student loans. I cannot afford to make payments, even income-adjusted, which requires only partial Renewal service. Sireen and I want to buy a house. Start a family. So, we have options. We can empty our meager savings to buy another few months with my degrees, so I can pursue jobs that don't exist, to provide for a wife and a
someday
child that don't need me to. Sireen's income covers our rent, which the university adjusted for us as a courtesy, after my dismissal, because, among many, they own the house we rent. Her income covers our car payment, our utilities, the credit cards we keep at a modest balance to maintain her rating. She feeds us.

I have the option to make direct payments to the loans that financed my Master's degree, my Bachelor's, so I can keep them longer while they go after my Ph.D. So I might manage a decent conversation with Sireen at our dinner table, over inexpensive wine and discounted, factory-produced meats. We could use these degrees to spend more time
thinking
about a family. We might watch more programs about birth. About home renovation and investment. Getting ready. We might age Biblically, into our hundreds. We might sleep in caves for generations and emerge after the flood, to start our lives then. I could give Sireen a child in another life, still educated enough in this one to know such places exist.

But I cannot get the teaching jobs that don't exist at the universities that aren't hiring without my Ph.D. They're a package deal, those degrees. We must devour them all, like defective young or upstart gods. Like flesh. A Eucharist become our domestic dream, our shared lives. People have been creating things by consumption for a long time. Monsters. Men. Personal saviors and vision guides. It's nothing out of the ordinary.

Three different degrees in literature and literary theory. So I can know things like that. I specialized in cognitive theory and how it informs abstract fiction.

After ninety days, if I do not report for repossession therapy, if I do not enlist in Homeland Renewal, then municipal officers
will issue warrants for my arrest. They will initiate repossession therapy anyway. They will assign me to a Renewal dispatcher, and they will begin garnishing my payments from Sireen's paycheck.

While I work Renewal, I will be fed two state meals during my shifts because no one is allowed to bring anything along anymore. No paper bags.

The same thing happens if you fail to pay your parking tickets, or file your taxes. Child support. They're acts of civic fraud, which are categorized as domestic terrorism against the common good. Not everyone has an education to surrender—those people work longer sentences.

In my case, it's reneging on my financial agreements with the Department of Education. It's theft, and it must be deterred—repossession alone is insufficient. Other borrowers need to be scared away from actions like mine. As if most of us have any kind of choice. As if we've got better things to do with the money we don't have than pay our debts.

Sireen teaches math at Central University, where I worked, and we make her loan payments on time. Because we must. After we graduated, she found a job first, a permanent one, and I followed her. That was our deal.

I did what I could.

My Renewal dispatcher works in a construction trailer in a municipal parking lot downtown, behind the main post office. There are no cars in the spaces. There are weeds between veins of exposed tar. An a/c window-unit sweats beside the front door, making puddles on the concrete for algae and other green things.

Men and women, in their vivid Renewal jumpsuits, stand around. A few wear plain clothes. Most of them are black or Hispanic. You ring the buzzer to get into the trailer—a red utility light beside the door lights up when you may enter. Like a therapist's office. Or a sound stage.

Inside the trailer, a black man with a salt-and-pepper beard sits at an aluminum desk. His eyes glow behind a computer screen, which shines on photographs of children. They face me—on
display. He can't see them from where he sits. His nameplate reads
JEREMIAH ROSEMEADE
.

He looks up, back down. “Name?”

“Benjamin Cade,” I say.

There are red jumpsuits on hangers against the far wall.

He glances at the suits, too.

“Go pick one out. They're sorted by height.”

It feels like a PVC tarp, with sleeves and cuffs. The lapels can be lifted and zipped around the nose and mouth.

“Three years,” he says.

“Right,” I say.

“Mandatory repossession therapy.” He looks at me. “Professor.”

Not that I ever was. That would connote permanence. A job for the ages. But whatever.

His printer ejects a slip of paper, and he offers it around the computer screen. The linoleum squeaks as I cross the room back to his desk.

“Your therapist is Cynthia St. Claire. Her office is at 520 North Main, Suite 3. You will report to her within five days.”

“Yes, sir,” I say.

He stops and looks at me. “I'm Rosie,” he says.

I wonder what bills he pays. How he earned his way up to this job. There is a shotgun leaning against a windowless door behind his desk.

He goes back to his screen. “You'll report here by 6:00
AM
, every shift. Meals will be provided. Wear comfortable shoes.”

I act attentive. Like I did at orientation, at each of the schools that have employed me. The same spiel every time, to make you feel welcome.

“Do I really need to go over everything?” Rosie says.

“No, sir.”

“There's some literature in that cubby. Feel free.”

“Yes, sir.”

He untangles a thumbprint scanner from the cables on his desk. Offers it up in his hand, like some palmist's secret.

“Give me your print,” he says.

I think about words unto flesh. The mark of the beast. But it's just a scanner. This is just a trailer. Rosie is just another man.

I give him my print.

When Sireen calls me, here, downtown, I step into the alcove of what was once the indie-theater's canopied entrance. It was still open when we moved into town. Sometimes, on Sunday afternoons, Sireen and I would come for a movie. We'd take turns: she always picked French films—things full of space and contrast and meaningful settings. She learned it growing up, with English and Arabic, so she would listen—placing herself in conversations I couldn't follow. I would watch her instead—the projector light on the slicks of her eyes—and listen to them babble. When it was my turn, I would pick existential dramas about nothing, which I convinced myself I liked. Sireen would hold my hand, as if we were watching horror films.

The sun is out today, so the people are too. Loitering. Exchanging stories. Taking up space. I don't want to be in anybody's way while I talk.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey,” Sireen says. It's quiet around her. “What's up downtown? Did you make your appointment?”

I don't respond to the first question, which is all right.

“On my way.”

“Did you get some lunch?”

I was too nervous to eat.

“Yeah.”

I stand in the alcove, waiting out the silence of what to say next, which is the most important part of these phone calls.

“Are you all right?” she says.

“Yeah.”

“Sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want to go to dinner tonight?” she says.

No.

“Sure.”

“Dimitri and I agreed to take one of the candidates out to his dinner. I think you ought to come.”

Her department is hiring. A campus visit, the necessary pilgrimage, is part of every academic's job search. Usually, a
department hosts a few of them—one per candidate. The dinner is one of the most important parts. When the candidate is told to relax and not to worry about his or her performance of self. Which is not the truth. Other faculty, from other departments, are usually in the mix, like Dimitri, who is not in Sireen's department. He is a sociologist. Inviting faculty from other departments demonstrates academic diversity.

“Okay,” I say.

“Could you shave?”

“What?”