This Is the Night (8 page)

“Regular lice, there’s a shampoo for that,” said Unzipped. “You can get it at the drugstore.”

“I told you guys, there
are
no lice. You’re not going to really
do
anything.”

The intern increased her note taking to a furious pace.

“Say again?” said Zipped-Up.

“So there’s no infestation at all?” asked Unzipped.

Lance sighed. “You’re just going to come in here, poke around with your equipment, and make like you’re getting rid of something. It’s a psychological extermination.”

“Pyscho-logical,” repeated Zipped-Up. “Make sure you get that down,” he told the intern.

Though Zipped-Up was slow and dull, the casual way he pursed his lips reminded Lance of his second-oldest brother. He let the silence hang, hoping Zipped-Up might repeat the small movement and bring the slowly fading memory of his brother back to life.

“I can’t have this kind of thing get out, the idea that we do fake exterminations,” said Unzipped. “If our clients associate us with a fake extermination, it might affect their decision-making process regarding whether they would hire us to do a real one.”

“And we are certainly not trained in anything psycho-logical,” added Zipped-Up.

“There’s barely anyone in the building,” Lance told them. “Most of these apartments are empty. Registry-runners, you know?” This wasn’t quite true, but he could sense that the two guys upstairs were making moves. Why not give these exterminators the opportunity to purge a bit of the contempt lying half-rotten in their bellies?

“It’s just sick,” said Zipped-Up.

“Disgusting,” added Unzipped. “You should point them.”

Lance looked to the intern, a woman his age, to see if she agreed. For a brief moment he caught her eye before she looked away.

“Look,” Lance said, “I’ll give you double just to not do anything.” He had begged, borrowed, and saved, but whatever he might owe didn’t matter.

The exterminators agreed, but demanded a verbal contract of nondisclosure. The four of them shook hands, the exterminators shrugged their shoulders and huddled with their intern, and though Lance had told them not to, they sprayed as though they were performing an actual fumigation. Lance pushed the crisp Currencies at their confused faces.

That night in bed, Lance explained to Lorrie that he had killed the lice forever. The smell of insect death hovered in the dense air, drowning out even the odors of Neutral Country P immigrant cooking that slipped beneath their door each evening and lingered till morning. Lorrie seemed to believe him, and for the first time in weeks, they began to undress each other. His fingernails were too long, the short, brittle hairs of his beard were too rough, but they squeezed and arced and twisted and followed each other around the bed. His weight pressed her deep into the mattress. He moved down between her thighs, but she pulled on his ears and brought him back up to her eye level. Nothing was normal anymore. Lance was disgusted by the lice, and with each thrust, he saw himself driving back the enemy. Only it wasn’t working. There was no escape from the scratches and marks on her body, rising off her skin with bright disdain. No, this wasn’t enough. He needed to hurt them, to hurt her. The flat nose and puffy lips of the intern flashed before him, but he pushed her image out. He needed to see Lorrie as she was. The next thing either of them knew, Lance turned her over and muscled his way into her. She let out a scream that was swallowed by the pillow; neither of them had ever done this before. Once it was over, the two of them lay on the bed, caught between the smells of themselves and the poison.

Even after he had the house smoked, had bombed the whole place with chemicals, Lorrie still felt the lice. Lance stopped sleeping and began to rage against each tiny bug that wasn’t there. After he’d scrounged up enough money and called his Substance Q dealer—a greedy, well-connected vet who also dabbled in fruit—Lance bought what he was sure was the last cantaloupe in Western City North. Lorrie refused to even try a bite, claiming she wasn’t hungry. By the time Lance finally bit into it, the melon was creased and sour. Fruit having failed him, Lance tried to win Lorrie back in places where he had won her the first time.

“We must go to the beach,” Lance said.

“The beach? Must?”

“And not just any beach. We’re going to the good beach. Our beach.” The cool air and scratchy sand, the hot wind uncoiled over twelve shades of blue: surely one of them could stop her free fall.

The two of them headed south, through the mountains and to the beach they had come to on their very first day on the coast. Lance had tossed some of her books into his duffel bag, the old kind she used to read, all the Foreigns. They drove farther, and the mountains turned dry, their shriveled tops like wrinkled blackheads. On the radio, the prime minister was giving his weekly address, condemning the latest domestic terrorism and offering up yet another warning on the dangers of Ideology Five. Lorrie switched the station, but his speech was on all of them. Since they had last been this way, the roads had slid into further disrepair. Lance took each turn slowly, ready for the rips and gashes in the concrete. From behind the wheel, he looked up and saw what he thought was a migrating bald eagle. Lorrie scratched the whole ride down.

“I read that the salt air will kill those things,” Lance said. “Not eagles, but lice.”

“Where’s an eagle?”

Lance pointed with his left hand, keeping his right on the wheel.

“Hard to say. I’m not sure an eagle would be around here.”

“Some wingspan, though. Check out that wingspan.”

“Where did you read that about the salt air, Lance? A magazine? The newspaper?”

“Just some research.”

He hadn’t read a thing.

They spread out on the sand. The sun was white and low, and the beach was crowded once again with people—mostly women, of course, the men old or damaged—everyone on blankets and lounge chairs. Lance peeled off his pants and shirt and slipped his trunks on. Lorrie stayed in her sundress and her flat, dark shoes, but Lance could still make out the fine hairs that began at the tops of her ankles, just above the scabs where she had scratched away the skin. As they sat, Lance could feel the murmurs of those around him, audible sounds of envy from young widows wishing that they too had a man who was intact and alive and would sit next to them at the beach.

He watched the breakers; he felt the scrape of each grain of sand as the wind blew them against his skin. Lance had always found paintings of landscapes to be sentimental and ugly, but as he stared at her ratted flesh, a demented gusto swept through him, and he knew that he would one day paint some version of Lorrie’s scabs against the sea.

Breathing deeply, he looked at Lorrie. She had on a new pair of sunglasses, huge platters that circled above her eyebrows and ended at the bottom of her cheekbones and gave Lance the feeling that she had stepped behind a large tinted window. She pulled out one of the underground newspapers that lay piled around their house (she currently subscribed to twelve different titles) and sighed loudly. Lance glanced at his bag and contemplated offering her one of the Foreign books that rested inside. Did she ever think about any of the big ideas she used to, or had the lice and her radical group’s sectarian split over Fareon pushed them all aside?

“It says here,” Lorrie read, “that a lot of Homeland Indigenous join up to go fight.” She undulated the newspaper with both hands until it made a bubbling sound. “They don’t even wait for the Registry. They just volunteer.”

“Huh.”

“I wonder why they would do that.”

“Maybe they just want to help out.”

“I wish Terry was here. She’d know. Her mom was actually Homeland Indigenous, you know.”

“Yeah,” Lance mumbled. “If only Terry were here.” Lance had never met what he considered a real Homeland Indigenous, and he doubted Lorrie had, either. He distinctly remembered Terry telling him it was not her mother who had been Homeland Indigenous but her grandmother. Maybe half.

“But why now?” Lorrie said. “I mean, look at these numbers.” She pointed to a paragraph near the bottom of the article. “Why would they sign up now, twenty-two years in, with higher casualties than ever before? It really makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

Lance agreed with her, but all her wondering convinced him that she couldn’t even put her thoughts in the right order anymore. They were, he saw, truly breaking apart. She had invisible bugs—he had seen her sneak three furtive scratches in the last four minutes—and with the afternoon character of the water blue and calm, all she wanted to talk about were Homeland Indigenous. In front of them, the tide pushed lower, leaving a pale white film on the sand. This, Lance knew, was a brush with the worst kind of trouble: Lorrie could wonder at the problems of people she had never met, but she could not look down at the scabs on her arms and the mutilated skin on her ankles to wonder why the marks were there, and then think further and recognize that they shouldn’t be there at all.

All the Foreign books stayed in Lance’s bag.

Lorrie checked her watch.

“What is it?” Lance asked.

“The laundromat, the hot one, last wash is at eight. I thought maybe we could get a load in.”

“After coming all this way, you want to leave so we can get a last load of already clean sheets in?”

Turning away, Lorrie edged to her side of the blanket.

“Are you serious?”

Lorrie shrugged.

A low, heavy quiver spun and hissed its way through his body before exploding in an outburst of indignation. “We washed a load yesterday and the day before that! I drove us all the way out here, to our favorite place, I packed us a fucking picnic, and still you can’t think about anything else but those stupid sheets.”

“Forget it,” Lorrie said softly.

“No, no. That’s what you want?” Lance sprang to his feet. What did she know about trouble? He was in the crosshairs, he was the one who would be gathered up to die. Couldn’t she see that? Of course not. She was too worried about herself, her imaginary fucking bugs.

“I said never mind,” Lorrie said.

“No, no. It’s me.” Above them, a stack of clouds traveled through the air, blotting out the sun. “I’m sorry for trying to make you feel better. For navigating the craters in the road, for making us sandwiches, for bringing some books I thought you might want to read. Please, by all means. Let’s get out of here.” He grabbed their bag of blankets, books, and sandwiches and tossed it toward her, a little harder than he knew was necessary. He had thought Lorrie was facing him, but as the bag sailed through the air, he saw that she had turned away. With his mind simmering, Lance said nothing, called out no warning, instead watching as time slowed down and the abundantly beautiful face of Lorrie spun once again toward him, the bag slamming into her cheek as she did so.

On the drive back, Lance accelerated past Veterans Beach as fast as he could—potholes be damned—and as his foot pressed down against the hanging pedal, he saw Lorrie make the smallest flick on the tip of her nose. Just the beginning. In two minutes, he knew, she would be pawing at it furiously with her fingernails. It was the first time Lance started to wonder about her parents. Who were they, and what did they need to know?

5.

The blackout is over, and the lights have come back on in Alan’s cell. How many more hours until they release him? Four years ago, the first thing he noticed upon arriving at the School was how far it was from everything, so private and lonely that not even animals came around. Not that Alan cares much about animals, though he makes an exception for the sled dogs belonging to Ricky X-P, the main character in his favorite book. The one thing Alan’s father was right about: the library here is better.

Mornings at the School bring a dead, hollow silence. Back home, unseen thrushes and wrens and creepers would pile their croaks and whistles on top of each other as if they each had something to say, without being bothered to listen. At the School, the skies are always empty. The silence is creepy, but Alan knows that the broad gap in sound means nothing more than that he goes to a school on such shitty land that even the lowest animals can find a better place to be. There is a hum, a lyric vibrancy to the clamoring of the outdoors where his parents live. But here in the dead desert of the School, there is no illumination of sound, only stumped, dried trees and the plentiful acceptance of everyone wishing they were elsewhere.

Rules and regulations cling to them like vines on a tree. Outgoing mail is monitored and read, fruit is canned and sugared, cheese is old and yellowed. A stream of well-adjusted Homeland Indigenous veterans visit their classrooms, a succession of different men who have all come to the same conclusion: that duty and service must be prized above all. Students at the School are allowed to speak Homeland language only, nothing else.

The moment he arrives, Alan is determined to find a way around the ban. Homeland words don’t always fit. Sometimes they’re flat, filthy, worthless words that drop cold and weightless from his tongue to the floor. Sometimes he just needs to speak Group F.

Sister Ava Azor stands at the front of the classroom. “Today,” she says brightly, “we will discuss your uniqueness. The Indigenous way of thought—your way—is very special, very different from Majority Group. Take these facts, for example.”

She reaches for a cracked leather book on the edge of her desk and begins to read. “Members of Homeland Indigenous Group P, who suffer from bad posture, are convinced they stave off scoliosis by thanking every dandelion they see.” She pauses and rotates her neck slowly, letting her eyes fall upon the class. Alan takes out
Crafty Beryl
—a new book by his favorite author, the one who wrote about Ricky X-P—and starts to read under the desk. Sister Ava Azor either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. In this story, Beryl is a sailor on a boat from a country that doesn’t exist, although he’s on an ocean that’s very real. Alan has never seen the ocean.

“It is a very old superstition,” Sister Ava Azor reads, “for members of Indigenous Group T to not comb their hair at night.”

There are no Group Ps in the school, so no one in the class can be sure about thanking dandelions, but there are plenty of Group Ts, all of whom Alan and the rest of the class have seen comb their hair after dark. Alan shakes his head and goes back to his book.

If thoughts are thought with words
, Beryl says,
then there is nothing unsayable.

This book is not nearly as good as the author’s first one. For twelve pages now, Beryl has been staring out a window, considering decisions he made in the past.
Write a sequel to your first book,
Alan would tell the author if he ever met him.
No one cares about this new stuff.

Sister Ava Azor continues, spewing gigantic facts that range from the Group Js at the northern border and their propensity for dining on flavored buffalo shit (the roars and groans of the class are difficult to silence for at least three minutes after she reads this sentence) to small groups on isolated islands who refuse to partake in any fruit that has already ripened. She is, Alan knows, reading failed words from failed books, words bent out of shape by time and now worn, stripped, and jammed into a wrong place in which they’ve never belonged.

Now, locked in a cell, Alan can still remember his response to these “facts.”
Four more years
, he had thought,
just four more years until I can leave this place and get some facts of my own
.

“On to the next lesson,” Sister Ava Azor had said. “Can anyone state the Homeland’s purpose in engaging the Foreigns?”

No one speaks.

“Now, I know none of you were born at the time,” she says, her upper lip raised and tightened, “but that doesn’t mean the reasons have changed. Why, class, are we at war?”

Silence again.

“Okay, let’s start from the beginning. It’s very important to me that all of you understand this. When Homeland Indigenous start to misinterpret their history, very bad things can happen.”

A small boy raises his hand. “What kind of bad things?”

Sister Ava Azor narrows her lips. “No need to dwell on the negative. Now, we all know about First Aggression and the origins of the conflict, but who is willing to give an explanation of the potent and hateful system of government known as Ideology Five?” Sister Ava Azor clasps her hands together and lets out a humongous fart.

Every boy in the classroom bites his lips hard. They cannot laugh. All of them know that if they do, Sister Ava Azor will screech a threat of pinching noses till their mouths fall open and she can pour detergent down their throats.

“No one”—her voice now plunged in anger—“is willing to explain the tenets of Ideology Five? No one can elucidate the nature of this tyrannical system? This system that all present will be expected to fight against?”

More silence from the class, until another gassy wheeze dribbles from Sister Ava Azor’s butt cheeks.

The fart opens up a space within him. Respect is worth four gallons of swallowed detergent, and Alan immediately recognizes the opportunity to increase his sphere of influence. But he must act fast, must execute properly. First, Alan looks for the right words, and of course the Homeland language can’t fit around them. The right joke would be neutered and lost if he choked it out in Homeland. He needs the raw specificity that only his own tongue can provide. A deep breath in as he turns to the three Group F boys next to him—they always sit together—and he says the joke in his language. All three of them shriek and wail, collapsing into their laughs and writhing about with giggles. The other boys in the class may have not understood the words, but the shape of the joke is clear. Mission accomplished.

“Enough!” says Sister Ava Azor.

The laughter stops.

She can’t impose as strong a penalty as she would like because she doesn’t know what Alan has said. Making a joke at a Sister’s expense is a huge punishment. Speaking your own language is a lesser one. Alan may escape the detergent yet. Even so, the salty swallow of fluid would be well worth it. The other boys look at him, the slow bloom of respect blossoming on their faces. In the front of the classroom, a half-breed swivels his head to look at Alan. They’ve never spoken, but Alan knows that the halfie who has turned is Gad. Gad’s face is easy to read. The heavens have unrolled before him, Alan thinks. In this cruel place, a half-breed on his side is just what he needs. From this day on, Alan and Gad are always together. With Gad by his side, the sad world around him feels just the tiniest bit happier. Since that day, until Alan’s punishment, the two of them have never been apart.