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BLACK
HELICOPTERS EPISODE 37 SATURDAY the EIGHTH - 10:41 PM Anne and Andy ordered another shot, another pint...
swaying to the pipers and fiddlers on the jukebox until, after a dozen noisy,
belching Conk delegates in their Tillerman hats and
t-shirts stormed in, they bolted; hailing a cab that reluctantly followed his
directions to the shabby corner fronting his shabbier hotel. Suddenly both
were on the street... cab retreating hastily... taillights two red dots, like
laser gunsights… shrinking, disappearing. Police surveillance drones swooped
like vampire bats; a U.N. helicopter spotlight swept over them, before
zooming further into the East End. "Well, here us
is!" Andy declared as they sidled towards the fire door. "Hindus
have mirrors they position all up and down the front stairs to see who's
bringing whom up..." he apologized. |
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"I
don't understand how they're allowed to prohibit American citizens from having
visitors. It's probably unconstitutional!" Anne protested. “Isn’t it?”
"People
who live in places like this... you got no rights
according to those enhanced Roe v. Wade repeal provisions that the busy Supreme
Court hornets keep churning out. It's
about stopping the prostitution, see?
Especially now, since the sensitivity mafia renamed it human
trafficking. And
drugs. Ditto with kat and opioids… and weed is
still a felony here, unless you’ve got a letter from a doctor - costs two, two
fifty an ounce sometimes, so fentanyl’s all the
rage. Rich people hate thinking that
poor people, somewhere, might be forgetting their miseries by having sex, fun
or even friends. But all these managers have arrangements with the street, so
the only people who get in are the hookers and dealers – while
the Meals on Wheels people kept getting locked out until the plague happened
and the program just went away! Just another example of
American free enterprise in action."
"This
political Gnosticism of yours is way, way
out of hand," Anne warned. "I really think... there has
to be a good reason for all these rules..."
"Nine-eleven? One-six? Boston Marathon? Coronavirus? St. Louis?
The children?
Well, if you find one," Andy suggested, "go tell your Catfish." A
drone skittered past the topmost floor of the hotel, hovering by the iron fire
stairs that ended on the third story to record their existence a moment before
swooping off into the dark.
"I
said there must be a good reason. I didn't say I knew what it was, or whether it
really was a good reason..."
"Fine!" Andy pulled a bar napkin he'd pilfered
from Houlihan's and began drawing a cryptic geometry
of lines and times and arrows. He had no credit card, of course, but his public
library card was plastic and easily slipped the fire door lock - he left it
hanging there, lifted Anne's wrist, fingering her pricey watch before releasing
her hand.
"Give
me exactly two minutes from the time I leave, you go in... don't forget the
card, ignore the buzzers. The fire door monitor's in the office... unless our
luck's really rotten, Babu will be sitting there,
mesmerized by "You Bet Your Car" with the wife and the little Babusies. Move quick, hang a left at the top of the stairs,
then right, there's no other way. Third door from the corner, that’s the
ladies' shower...” his moving finger stopped and stabbed a star… “it's the door that doesn't have a number. Lock the door, run
the water, wait for me to knock. Three times, once, once more. If I'm more than
five minutes, go to the back stairs at the end of the corridor, up two flights
to the fourth floor, I'm in 435. There's usually junkies
on the stairs, but if you move fast enough they won't react in time to hurt
you."
"Now
this really doesn't sound like
America. I'd rather we went to the shelter!"
"No,
you wouldn't. Over there, when I work the night shift, I carry a flashlight and
a baseball bat. Technically, we could get rid of the sex rules because we don't
get any funding anymore, but it's like letting roaches into the place... you
let one get by, then two, pretty soon everybody's doing it. And then it stops
being consensual..."
"Andy,
are there roaches upstairs?"
"Nah! Henry takes care of them?"
"The janitor? Exterminator?"
"Seeya!" He planted a
farewell kiss on her lips, still open from forming the last three syllables of
"exterminator", held up two fingers, turned the corner and approached
the door to the hotel between two boarded up storefronts, pressed the buzzer
and, in a few seconds, vanished. Anne, checking her watch, waited exactly two
minutes before forcing the fire door, scampering up a long flight of stairs as
a screeching buzzer bounced from wall to wall. Turning left, as instructed, she
heard Andy and a number of high-pitched foreign voices engaged in a dispute.
She shut the door of the filthy shower stall, turned the water on, removed her
Jimmy Choos; then, after looking down at what was
smeared over the tiles, put them on again and scrunched back against the wall.
Two minutes later the knocks came... three, one, one.
Andy
led her to the back stairs and they went up. A ragged man lay sprawled in the
stairwell between the third and fourth floor.
Anne
hesitated. "Shouldn't we stop? He looks dead!"
"If
he is, he'll start to smell, and Babu will have
somebody haul him out. There's guys here that'll do anything for a break on the
rent; cash back for a bottle, a rock or some kat.
Come on!" he beckoned.
On
the fourth floor, faint radio and television sounds seeped forth under the
doors to rooms. At 435 Andy motioned for quiet, unlocked the dark room and
entered, fist closing around a broomstick by the door. Suddenly, he flipped the
light and Anne had only a startled instant to see the two rats on a table
before they leaped towards a hole in the wall. Andy hurled the broomstick like
a spear, striking the lattermost on its hind flank but, with an angry squeal,
the pest pulled itself through its hole.
"Fuck!"
The
room had been ransacked, torn to pieces... in fact... as if by spies looking
for secret documents. Papers, clothes, remains of what might’ve been taco chips
and broken appliances littered the small table, bureau, sink and bed; more were
piled on the floor.
"Least
they won't be back for a while!" He shrugged his jacket off,
tossed it on the bed. "Well... welcome to the home of unassimilated
elements. Tain't the Ivona,
is it? Tell me - it's what you've yearned for all your life!"
"All...
my... life... it's what I've been trying to get away from, all my
life... ohh, watch out..."
Andy
looked down. A turd... canine or human... crouched just beyond the toe of his
second hand shoe. "The perp's calling card," he said, "thought
the place looked like someone broke in. Asshole!" he added, scooping the
feces up with a MicroTimeTM postcard
promising twelve e-book downloads for a penny, pointing it menacingly at Anne. "Your people?"
"Why?"
she asked. “And get that out of my
face!”
The
room was about ten feet by twelve, just slightly larger than the dark, solitary
cell Andy had inhabited at the Hall of Justice. Besides the narrow bed and
table... a real estate sign propped up on plastic milk cartons... there was a
dresser, one chair. A box of papers had been overturned by the bed... a
frightened cockroach tried to scurry between documents containing telephone
numbers of civil rights, peace and anti-UN groups who might or might not be coming
to town, but Andy reached past the plastic bottle of generic tequila under the
bed, pinched the insect, held it up and... to Anne's
bewilderment... tossed the squirming bug up into the air, towards the ceiling.
Gravity
to the contrary, it did not come down and, when Anne looked more closely, she
saw a supermodel-legged spider emerge from the cracked, spotted mirror over the
dresser, climbing its web towards the ceiling.
"Dinner!"
"I
thought you said Henry, the janitor, made sure you didn't have any bugs!"
"Henry!"
Andy pointed upwards. "They check in, but Henry gets 'em before they check
out, if the rats don't find them first. He's probably my best friend... you
know? Spiders are loyal. More than you can say about Hillary Clinton!"
"Bitter, bitter Andy!"
"I
can work with individuals, I just can't stand processes. Process made what's
left of the left about as viable as the Costa Rican loyalist argument."
"That's
racist!"
"So
cancel me!" Andy put his keys and wallet on the table, picked up
the tequila and took a long, sour gulp... swishing it between his teeth as a
form of dental hygiene, except that he swallowed it when he was done - plaque, pulque and all.
Then
he extended the bottle... hesitantly...
"I
have a better idea." Anne sat down on the bed and opened her purse,
revealing an amazing array of perfumes, lipsticks, eyeliners, pills and contact
lenses. "Can I help it if the world gets a little misty in our old
age?" she said of the last, fingers rising to her eyes. "This place is
worse than that, that... pad... we shared at the U. Sordid! Makes
me want to commit sordid acts!" She opened a lipstick container and
shook out a little plastic baggie. "Brought some pot in case I found the
right sort of place to smoke it but rooms in the Ivona
all have cameras... this neighborhood seems the kind of place where it's safe
for people to smoke pot in. It’s
medicinal, from Maryland… I have one of those little cards supposed to let you
possess it in the red states! It’s for
what polite people call female troubles.
Do you still smoke?"
"When
weed's five times as expensive as crack, ten times more expensive than kat? Only pot I ever see is when some slumming scion of the
great, shrunken bourgeoisie gets busted and leaves his shit behind at the
Sanctuary. Rich man’s drug, now and
it’ll get even more so if they legalize it here. Besides, it's politically incorrect. Supports
terrorism, right?... as if bananas, diamonds and gasoline don't... and it’s so
close to legal, now, where’s the fun?"
"But
you haven't forgotten how to roll..."
Andy
took the weed and his papers from the tobacco pouch, cleared a small space on
the improvised table. "Til' your Catfish makes
tobacco illegal... like riding bicycles. Or driving a car.
Haven't had a car since the first round of defundings,
did I say? Three fuckin' years. But this fellow wanted
me to drive him to the hospital in his Volvo last month... fucked up... and I
realized I could still do it. Drive, I
mean. Scared the shit out of me..."
"Why
did he have to go to the hospital."
"This
other dude stabbed him in the gut on my shift. We try to keep the weapons out
but it still happens all the time. Social worker, asking the wrong guy wrong
questions. He lived. Guy who did it just faded out by the time I got back, fading
back into the woodwork. Or rode the Dog to Cap City." He twisted the ends of
the joint, lit it and took a sample toke. "Pinhead's fault, if you ask
me... sleepin' in a car's safer than at the
Sanctuary, only he got this law passed that confiscates cars and sells them
like Russian oligarch yachts... though a lot cheaper... when somebody sleeps in
one. It's for local vagrancy now but watch... give it a year or two more and
they'll have city cops out patrolling rest stops on the Interstate making
busts, confiscating all those nice new out-of-state Caddies and Beemers from the drunk boomers who pulled over to sleep it
off, so the politicians can keep voting themselves money to bribe the suckers
with without raising taxes. Rounding up
stockbrokers on soliciting charges for the private jails that they rent out
prisoners to pick tomatoes, replacing all those Mexicans we rounded up and
kicked out. In our
dreams, right? This tastes OK. Some of the deep conspiracy people on the
street say cops are dealing weed cut with rat poison to thin the herd, so to
speak, but I guess this didn't come off any street, right? There's a station at
the U. that's pretty good, but my radio got ripped off and, with the convention
and all, I haven't had time to hustle up another one. Guess, if I had, it woulda been stolen or smashed. So we'll have to amuse
ourselves without sounds..."
He
took another toke, handed over the joint, which Anne sucked at, way too
anxiously.
"Do
people break in often?"
"Now and again. Think the rumor I had cash money might’ve had something to do with it...
if it wasn't Conks. Or Pinhead's cops. Even the UN...
they do black bag stuff, turquoise bag, maybe… but usually don't make a mess,
so I'm told. On the other hand, your
ordinary street creep would’ve made off with Mexico or… uh...” he added,
rotating the plastic bottle, “Oklahoma’s finest, here. Salud!" He extended
the liquor. Anne took it, but simply
held it and looked back at him.
"Unless
they were trying to throw you off their trail..." she suggested. “This,” she frowned, sipping at the lip of
the bottle, “…this comes from Oklahoma City?”
"Might be. Maybe
those Tim McVeigh people brewed it. Or
it was Mormons… they used to be behind everything, right? Like in that western remake… you know… ‘Riders of the Purple Sage’?
The one that Hollywood liberals slapped together in case Romney got into
the primaries to be nominated again, only Donald scared him and the others off
except the dude as hates Disneyland, and they had to offload it to video until
they ran out of product during the plague third wave plague? Take another hit," Andy recommended.
"Unless the Catfish makes you piss in a bottle whenever the fancy takes
him."
"I
work for Rayna, she doesn't care," Anne said. "Tillerman's
alt-libertarian legions have to agree to random, so called voluntary marijuana
testing… speaking of oxymorm… morons, even in the
legal states… but they're all on methamphetamine and steroids anyway. Worked for Trump.
Still don't feel right. I know... do you have any candles?"
"Candles? Sure... power's always going off. What do you
want candles for?" He opened the bottom drawer of the dresser, rooted
around for a moment; finally removed a couple of old candles and a matchbox.
"They're
not politically correct anymore either, you know?" he warned. "Bad as
meat and soap... tallow exploits dead animals and the wicks are toxic.
Something in there... lead, mercury, pollutes the ecosystem... these are so
fuckin’ old, I don’t even think that they’re Chinese!"
"It
would be wrong to keep them," Anne agreed, "but wrong to throw them
out... wasting resources... like with the ivory poachers… so let’s just burn
them up now."
"OK."
Andy cleared a place on the top of the dresser, lit the two candles and turned
off the light, causing the room to lose most of its sharp edges. Rustlings returned to the walls. "Better? Does this remind you of the way
we were?" He repeated the last phrase, whistling this time.
"Henry?"
"What..."
"Your spider? When it's sort of dark like this... do
you think he'd come down and sit beside me?"
"I
have a better idea." Andy sat down beside her, putting his finger to her
lips as the old bedsprings began creaking. "Shhh!
Don't be frightened away."
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