Going Shogun (20 page)

I think,
Oh, some decoration...but
that’s a strange piece of artwork.

There are a few pictures on the
wall, directly above the table, of a grinning, handsome, gray-haired man and a past-middle-age
woman that has aged absurdly well.  Smooth skin, great smile, barely even a
hint of crow’s feet.  If that’s Bingo’s mother, I can see where she gets her
lovely looks.  They’re standing on a beach with wind-blown hair in one photo,
on a high-rise balcony overlooking the city in another.  The third photo shows
the two of them standing beside a mid-life crisis sports car, Cardinal-red, one
of the ones that are so exclusive, they’re only made available for purchase by
R3s and up.

The fourth picture snatches all the
air from my lungs.

Taken at night, the surroundings give
off bright reflections from the flash.  A medic stands to the left, hands on
his hips, back to the camera.  Lights from an ambulance illuminate the leaves
of an oak tree, and wrapped around the trunk, to the point of being completely
and entirely destroyed, is the barely recognizable, ultra-limited, Cardinal-red
sports car.  There are chunks and parts everywhere, glass scattered on the
ground like glinting balls of pea-sized hail.

I realize the twisted hunk of metal
on the table is a remnant.  A memento.

Nobody could’ve survived that
.

Instantly, I feel like I’m invading
her private memorial, looking at something I wasn’t meant to see, or meant to
notice, stepping uninvited into her past, so I leave it be and get back to the
task of finding something new to wear.  I open the closet door and it’s filled
with overpriced silk suits and silk ties.  It seems wrong to be judgmental
after what I’ve just seen.

I flip through, looking for
something less formal, and come across the green, button-up, collared shirt he
was wearing in the beach photo.  It feels like I’m touching sad history.  The
material is almost cold between my fingers.  I move on.

It’s weird looking through all her
dad’s nice clothing because it’s what I would’ve wanted my style to be at a
higher level, before last night’s epiphany, before I understood that
Contentment is possible in the here and now.

I settle for a pair of jeans that
cost more than what I make in a month.  I can tell by looking at the brand
name.  But man, they’re comfortable when I slide them on and then get remorseful
for even having the thought.  I’m in a bizarre mental place and can’t wait to
get out of there.  I see a couple of t-shirts by the same brand that are worth
a week’s salary each.  I pick the dark-blue one with white trim and an
elaborate white logo.

I stand at the doorway comfortably,
but uncomfortably, dressed in the clothes of a dead man, contemplating what I
might say to her.

***

I walk back into the kitchen,
deciding I won’t say anything, hoping to pretend like I didn’t see anything but
knowing that’s not the right move, knowing I won’t be able to keep silent about
it.  She’s got pajama bottoms on now, arms curled around her waist, staring
down at the floor.  A lone waffle rests on a plate beside her.  She saves me by
bringing the room up first, but she doesn’t turn around.  “I should’ve gone in
there to get them for you.  Sad, huh?” 

 “Yeah.  Uh, I’m really sorry.”

“The report said ‘Deceased traveling
at a high rate of speed, alcohol involved.’”

“When did it happen?” I ask, leaning
over the backside of the bar.

“A year ago yesterday.  That’s why I
was at Elite last night.  To get bombed and...try to forget.  Again.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“When would I?  You said so
yourself, we haven’t seen each other in months.”

“You could’ve told me the last time,
when we saw each other at Shaman’s.”

She whips her head around, chin over
her shoulder, and says, “Somehow it didn’t seem appropriate with Forklift pissing
on the grill.  And I wasn’t ready to talk about it then.”

“You are now?”

She moves around to face me.  Slides
the waffle over and begins to pick at the edges, putting a small piece of it in
her mouth.  She chews slowly, swallows.  Tears off another small bite then
washes it down with a sip of coffee.  I’m patient, waiting, giving her the time
she needs. 

 “It’s so fresh in my mind.  Like it
was the real yesterday, and not the year ago one.  I feel such guilt, all the
time, every day.  It was my choice to Rescind, to leave them behind, you know? 
Sitting up there on their golden mountaintop.  I despised that fake,
pretentious bullshit so much.”  The
so much
comes out through a clenched
jaw and gritted teeth.  “I have this same dream, about three times a week.  I’m
right there, in the back seat.  Dad is laughing, asking Mom if she wants to see
what the car can do.  She’s egging him on, but hesitant too, like she knows
it’s wrong, but doesn’t want to stop him.  Everything is flying by,” she says,
flinging both hands past either side of her head.  “I can hear myself yelling
for him to stop but can’t hear me, and he keeps going faster.  We fly around
this curve and he loses control.  The car bounces and skids and I wake up,
about ten feet away from the tree.  Always.  Every time.  I never get to hit it
with them.” 

The sense of longing in that last
sentence gives me goose bumps.  “That’s gotta be rough.”  I know that’s
undeniably inadequate, but what do you say to something like that?

“Whenever I look at those pictures I
think, ‘
What if I’d stayed?
’  Would it have been any different?  Maybe
we would’ve gone to dinner together that night instead of them going to that
R2’s party.  Or maybe I would’ve been in the car with them, like in my dream,
and I wouldn’t be here either, dealing with so many regrets.”

“I’m sure they loved you.”  I’m
trying to be as sympathetic as possible.  I’ve never had to deal with a loss
like this, don’t even have the words for it.  My folks are alive and well.  We
have dinner together every other Sunday.  Even all four of my grandparents are
hanging around.

“They did, definitely,” she says,
staring at the wall behind me.  Absent.  Looking at a memory I can’t see. 
“They were always trying to get me back up there with them.  I have a stack of
Automatic Renewal applications at least two inches thick under my bed.”

Despite the fact that The Board is
constantly promoting Ascension through personal effort and unofficially frowns
at Rescinders, who have a legal right to do so, Automatic Renewal is a
privilege granted to rescinding Residents that were originally R10 and above. 
It’s a way for The Board to flaunt it in the faces of R11s and say,
Sucks
down there, doesn’t it?  Even the ones that
wanted
to join you don’t
want to stay.  Come, be one of us
.

“Why didn’t you go back up?”

She snaps out of her trance, narrows
her eyes at me. 

Uh-oh.  Not smart.

The stare lingers awhile before she
sighs and looks down at the waffle.  She tears it in two and puts the full half
on another plate, sets it in front of me.  “You see that?” she asks, nodding
toward mine.  “That’s what they left me.”

“Half a waffle?”

She rolls her eyes.  “No, shithead. 
Half.  Half of everything they had.  The rest went to charity.  I tossed them
and all that R3 bullshit they loved aside like they were trash.  But,” she
says, with her bottom lip starting to quiver, “they still loved me enough to
take care of their little girl after they were gone.  And, I’ve never told
anybody this, because I feel so much shame, but I took it.  All of it.”

“I’m sure it was a lot of money. 
Who wouldn’t?”  I can tell immediately that it’s the wrong thing to say and
I’ve lit the fuse. 

Man, I’m full of idiotic questions.

It’s a natural reaction for me,
though.  I’m so used to daydreaming about that kind of financial freedom that I
don’t pause to consider how she’s feeling.  To me, the way I’ve been looking at
life for so many years, I’d sell a few non-vital organs, even some vital ones,
to black market dealers on RollerNinja for a chance at half of whatever was
sitting in an R3’s bank account.

She makes a fist and pounds the
countertop with every word that comes next.  “Did you hear me?  I,”
pound
,
“am,”
pound
, “ashamed.” 
Pound, pound, pound.
  “The big
Rescinder.  The biggest advocate for telling all of those assholes that they
can shove it that you will ever,
ever
find.  I took their money,” she
says, now beating her chest with her fist, “I took all of that ‘
Look at me,
I’m an R3’
money.  And I am so god-awful ashamed.  But you wanna know why?”

Before I get a chance to respond,
she tells me.

“So I could sit here and try to
forget, without having to face so much of the
life
that you were talking
about last night.  This morning, whatever.  I couldn’t imagine going out into a
world with a smile on my face, going to work every day, going to the grocery
store, driving to the beach to put my toes in that same stupid sand, trying to
act normal.  Look at this.  Look,” she says, flinging open each and every
cabinet door in the kitchen.  They’re all filled with row after row after row
of empty liquor bottles.

“But I’ve seen you out,” I say. 

“Twice, Chris.  Twice.  I’ve seen
you exactly two times in the past year, and I was so high and wasted that I
could barely remember it the next day.  You never saw me the rest of the time,
so drunk I couldn’t remember where I was the night before.  It took me about
three months of crying and dealing with the shame and drinking from the moment
I woke up until I passed out on the couch before I could finally put on
something other than pajamas and go get blasted somewhere else.  I couldn’t
stand doing it here anymore, alone.  I’d get drunk and talk to the most random
people I could find, just to have some sort of human interaction.  Sometimes
that lead to some pretty reckless shit, but I was looking for anything to get
my mind off it.”

My next question jumps out of me
before I even have a chance to comprehend how selfish it’s going to sound or
how quickly I’m stealing the moment from her.  “So that’s how you knew about
The Minotaur last night?”

The kitchen bar is between us, and
it might as well be The Great Divide.

“Really? 
Really?
  You’re
asking me about that
now
?  Are you kidding me? 
That’s
what you
want to know?  Not
how’re you doing
, or
are you okay
?  I’m
spewing my guts about my dead parents and you’re worried about your fucking
game?”

“Ellen—”

“Don’t call me that.”

“You’re clearly not Bingo.”

“Don’t be a selfish prick.”

“Would you stop for a second?  I
am
sorry, okay?  So, so sorry about your parents.  I wish I had known months ago. 
A year ago.  The day it happened.”

“No you don’t.”

“I do.  And I promise you, with
everything that I have, that when I’m able, I’ll do my best to be whatever you
need.  I really will, but we can’t change the past today.  And I mean
literally, not today.  I have to be back in Urine Town by 3AM with some stolen
recipes so we can keep playing
Forklift’s
game, and
Lewis and Clark’s
game and
The Minotaur’s
game.  Everybody’s game
but
mine.  I’m a
pawn whether I like it or not, and I’m so close to sitting in a prison that I
can already hear the cell door slamming shut, and I need to know what you know. 
Does that make any kind of sense, at all?”

Yes, I’m being selfish.  Yes, I’m
being a prick.  But if I’m going to
keep
my promise, it’s important.

“There’s nothing to tell, Chris.  It
was about a month ago.  I was drunk, I was sitting in The Blue Sioux with Andy,
and I vaguely remember him saying something about a new underground guy called
The Minotaur that was an ex-Board Agent.  That’s it.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes.”

“Truthfully, that’s all?”

“Yes!”

“Okay,” I say, and leave it alone.  My
gut-instinct sensors are firing off and I feel like she’s leaving something out
but I’m not about to pressure her further.  I take a bite of the cold waffle to
let the dustup settle.  She’s breathing hard through her nose and it eventually
returns to something resembling normal.

In an attempt to make amends, I say,
“That’s a lot to take in.”

She huffs, but it comes with a hint
of agreement.  She says, “I shouldn’t have unloaded on you like that.”

“Those were some big guns.”

“You had your breakdown on
Forklift.  I had mine on you.”

“Sometimes we need an outlet.  It is
what it is,” I say, taking another bite of waffle.  Speaking around the
mouthful, I add, “Out of all of that though, there is one thing that makes
sense.”

“What’s that?”

I swallow.  “You said you’d get
wasted and talk to random people.  I was wondering why you seemed so happy to
see Forklift last night.”