King's County (9 page)

"They tell them it's going to Africa,
like it's part of the reconstruction. Now you know." Braulio said
explaining to me.

We were soon back out on the street. It
was wet and dark enough for the streetlights to come on. Clarke
walked out ahead of us, and suddenly spun around,

"You really think ya’re hot shit, don’t
ya, mate?" Clarke had been taking regular hits off of an unmarked
plastic inhaler, "I saw what you did back there. What is that,
soldier boy?"

He walked up to me, narrowing his eyes.
Braulio watched like a stone, hiding behind his thick
beard.

"So what are you up to then,
eh, private? I wanna know
why-you’re-here
. You obviously ain't
no artist. You’re here to spy on us."

Clarke took a step closer and jabbed a
thin finger into my chest. I cut off his next words. I grabbed the
finger and twisted it until he screamed.

His finger didn't break. I could feel
it flex in my sweaty grip like it was made of plastic.

All of the aggression in his face
turned to pain and I let him go. He ran holding his injured hand to
shelter behind Braulio.

"Whatter you done?" Clarke regained
some of his confidence. He spoke over Braulio’s right shoulder.
"Yor in a lot of trouble now. You just assaulted a
Dean!"

I took a step in their direction.
Braulio closed his eyes and held his palms out in front of him.
Clarke jerked backward to trip over his feet and fall on his
ass.

"Alright, I'm leaving now. Right?
So...fuck off then, the both of you. And you need to stay away from
me from now on. OK, fellas?"

They were listening. Braulio even
nodded his head.

&

There was no directory that I could
find and the few sad sacks at the cafe said they didn't know her. I
went searching room to room through the maze of the colony
building.

Starting on the ground floor there were
some large common spaces, an auditorium, offices and supply rooms.
They were all completely empty and looked to have not been used in
years. I took the elevator to A, the first one up.

I learned this night that most of the
colony inhabitants lived between A and C and that many of them
rarely ever left. I don't believe this was known to many outside
that region of the building. I wonder if even Braulio knew what was
going on here.

The door opened on A and the first
thing I noticed were the ceilings. They were low, not higher than
2m, and rounded at the top like an egg. The floors were made of a
dark brown, soft, almost spongy material. The yellow walls were
gently lit by sconces embedded at the corners. The entire area was
in this design. There were, I’d guess, as many as two hundred
residents on these floors.

The hallways sloped up and down
interconnecting clusters of 8 or 10 pod-like rooms. The cluster
nearest the elevator was fully occupied. They all were just kids,
twenty year olds in their forties.

There were no doors. I could see
directly into each small single room apartment. A simple bed was
the only furniture.

I walked through the first cluster, my
presence seemingly unnoticed. The people on A were all sleeping or
lounging, obliviously high or burned out in some way or another.
One room was empty. The last room had two on the bed having a go at
a slow, deliberately paced form of sex under a ratty
blanket.

I kept moving, intending to
methodically search the whole building. I didn't want to imagine
Opal living like this. I was starting to worry if I’d find
her.

Past the first cluster, the hallway
wound upwards and to the left then forked. There was no numbering
or distinctive markings on anything. I kicked at the wall with the
sole of my boot until it made an decent enough dent and took the
downward branching hallway to the next cluster.

It was worse. An active vent in the
ceiling carried away a lot, but not all the smell. It was that of
the dead not allowed to die.

The first room held an enormously fat
person. I didn't even recognize him/her as human until I saw its
face, seeming to float on a mound of swaddled flesh. Its soft dark
brown eyes blinked a few times as they watched me pass.

The next room was empty and spotlessly
clean. The room across from it held one man, terribly thin and pale
with long colorless and brittle hair. He was cutting his arm with a
piece of a broken cup and watching the wound quickly coagulate and
seal itself in the space of several seconds. He ignored my watching
him to concentrate on pushing the shard through the tougher skin of
his leg. There was a pop as it broke through. He withdrew the blood
soaked porcelain and examined it like an expert craftsman before
licking a drop off the end.

Another man brushed past me in the hall
to enter the room. He was carrying a short length of hose and a can
of the red tagged strong beer. The two men looked like they might
have been brothers. They shared the same washed-out, underfed look,
and reticent, gently broken demeanor.

The self-mutilating man accepted the
hose and beer from his friend without comment. They had obviously
done this before. The second man got onto his hands and knees and
pulled his pajama pants down over his thin rump.

The mutilator expertly worked the
hose’s tapered nozzle into his friend's ass. He then popped the top
of the can and poured half of it in.

The second man closed his eyes, totally
absorbed in the experience. The liquid fizzed, resonating in the
plastic tube.

“How is it?” I said.

The mutilator snarled, snatched up and
threw his jagged piece of cup at me. It hit me in the eyebrow which
immediately started streaming blood down the side of my
face.

He lunged at me. I kicked him in the
shoulder with the bottom of my boot. The man weighed nothing; he
crashed backward into his friend causing the tube to come out and
spray foam all over the both of them.

Heads popped out of doorways. The
cluster was roused, maybe they smelled my blood. I wasn't healing
the way they would.

Wasted bodies emerged. Three, four, now
six of them. I didn't want to do this. I stomped and yelled then
banged hard on the wall with my fist until the last one had
sullenly retreated back into his room.

&

"El Jon, hey, how’s it going?" My
question caught him off guard. He was sitting alone at a table in
the corner and was surprised at being approached like this. Maybe
he was embarrassed.

"You’re...Ellen’s friend?" He said.
"What do you want?"

"Yes, Elena. I'm actually looking for
Opal. You know her right?"

“No...” He waved at his pack of
cigarettes on the table and didn't answer me. I shook my
head.

"Do you know where she is? I'm looking
for her - for Opal. There's something I have to show
her."

He wasn’t understanding me. We sat
together in silence for a moment while he collected himself. I
tried again, but my further questions, however gently phrased, only
disturbed him. After a few more attempts, I started feeling
sadistic. I left him sitting there, unreachable, quietly stressed
out in his own world, and decided to try the waterfront.

&

There was a bar at the end of the
boardwalk. It was a smallish standalone building, dark and quiet on
the outside.

Inside was a lively mixed crowd. I sat
alone at the bar, crammed into tight quarters nursing a drink. The
game was on.

Seahawks were killing the Bears 37-13.
I studied the game. The level of play was incredible. QB’s were
consistently throwing perfect 40 and 50 yard passes. Guards were
getting upfield to block safeties. Linebackers stunted, backpedaled
and jumped to make clean interceptions. DE’s dive-bombed on edge
rushes like maniacs, got cut off at the knees by RB’s, flipped
through the air and got right back up afterward like it was
nothing.

They were all chipped and on formula.
Who knows what else. When the player bios came up on the screen, I
saw most of them were in at least their twentieth season. Seasoned
pros with better than brand new bodies, a few were even older than
me.

"Hey, man. Are you really watching
that?" He was short with shaggy, unwashed hair. His clothes were
old brown things under a rust colored pea coat.

"OK, OK, stupid question, I guess. But
hey, man, don't watch that stuff. Serious: It’s not good for you,
you know," he said.

"Why is that?" I said.

A moment of frustration passed through
him.

"I’m going to show you something." He
looked around the bar and reached into his coat.

"Hot Stuff! I know you!" A woman turned
me around on the bar stool. It was Alice, the placement agent from
the airport. She dove in and put her lips over mine, wrapping her
arms around my neck.

I stood up and kissed her back. She
didn't stop me when I felt her up outside her suit. Pea coat
started tugging on my sleeve trying to get my attention.

I broke off the kiss and pulled Alice
away from the bar and toward the door. Opal was just walking
in.

"Hi – hey, Opal. I've been looking for
you." I said. Alice dug her chin into my shoulder and squeezed my
butt with both hands. I did my best to ignore her.

"Oh, OK. Can I get a drink first?" She
said.

The three of us lurched over back to
the bar. I brought up the storage room and her sculpture but she
wasn't understanding me. I tried to sit and explain more clearly
but Alice had me pinned standing up against the brass
railing.

The tugging on my sleeve
returned.

"Here it is. Look, man." He motioned
for me to lean in. It was an old folded and wrinkled photo of a
man. The man wore a black leather jacket and jeans. His hair was
parted in the middle and he was smiling and sticking his thumbs up.
I didn't understand it.

"Do you know who this is?" He said. "He
was a great man. A great man. We’re all down with that kind of shit
here. You gotta get with us, man. Throw off those
chains."

Opal got her drink and gulped it. Alice
stayed clamped on and rubbed small circles on my abdomen. Pea coat
wouldn't leave.

A commotion preceded her. She came into
our space thumping her ridiculous purse onto the bar.

"We really need to talk. Let’s go,
c’mon," she said.

"Elena, I'm not going anywhere. What
the hell do you want?" I said.

She didn't care for my response. She
acknowledged the other girls with a brief glance and took a step
backwards. She looked deeply into my eyes,

"Hey! Everybody listen!" She pointed at
me. "This guy here, you need to know - he's a PIG. Yeah. A PIG!
He's a PIG! He's a PIG!"

The patrons started chanting, PIG PIG
PIG PIG, rhythmically pounding their drinks on the bar and table
tops.

"What is your problem? What does that
mean?" I said.

"Ha ha, fucker. They think you're a
cop. You're screwed now. So can we go?"

"You're a fucking crazy bitch, you know
that?"

PIG PIG PIG PIG

"I think I might be pregnant!" She
said.

The chanting and pounding intensified.
Someone threw a wadded napkin at me. Pea coat jumped up on a
chair.

"It's a raid! RAID! RAID!" He
said.

A lone helmeted police officer stood in
the doorway. The crowd cleared out fast. I went with them
hollering, trying to incite them.

But nothing, no hurly burly
materialized outside - everyone scattered – I was out alone on the
pier, catching my breath in the cool air.

Opal had disappeared in the melee. I
found Alice coming out but she was too shook up to do anything. She
said she was going home. I guess the mood was ruined for her. I
needed to get away before Elena turned up so I broke into a jog,
pounding the boards going down the dark waterfront back to my room
at the colony.

Morning:

Citizen Waller, this is your
good friend, Dux quondam, the former air officer, former space
commander and current man-at-large one Edward Hart. If the rumors
about you are true, and I have no reason to think they are not,
then you need to get out of that cesspool of a city without delay.
Join us instead. We’re having a blast and everyone wants to meet
you. What more do you need to know?

Check the tables below for
times and places. Look for Bob. I’m sure you'll figure out the
rest.

**

King’s County Ch.3, Estrella

***

I don’t remember much from when I was
very young, flashes of little moments, day cares and nameless other
kids, then living at my aunt and uncle’s house outside Seattle. My
parents were still alive but they were not around and I have no
memory of them.

At twelve I went to a boarding school,
a cheap one out in the woods near Rainier. There was my life for
ten and a half months out of the year. Boring as you might have
guessed and our time off was never very notable, either. We did a
lot of laying around, killing time hanging out at my aunt’s or my
friend’s houses.